


As a Star, Forever Out of Reach

by Neyasochi



Series: Bond and Blade [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Blade of Marmora Keith (Voltron), Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oral Sex, POV Keith (Voltron), POV Shiro (Voltron), Prince Shiro & Knight Keith, Rutting, Sheith Big Bang 2018, Slow Burn, bc it's sheith, lots of physical affection lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-06-30 19:30:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 74,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15758220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neyasochi/pseuds/Neyasochi
Summary: The intensely devoted friendship between Prince Takashi and Keith, a lowborn rogue from the arid southern wastelands, was unexpected to say the least. It’s the stuff of street-plays and penny-novels— a commoner plucked from the grimey alleys to serve as the prince’s right-hand and confidant— and for a time, Keith even dares to believe that it will last. But the disappearance and presumed death of Prince Takashi while on an expedition to the borderlands brings everything he’d hoped for to ruin, and while the kingdom mourns its prince, Keith mourns the loss of his closest friend. Bereft, he sets out on a journey to the lost places along Arus’ borders, strung along by a distant call he cannot place.Fate is kind enough to bring them back together, but not without first exacting a terrible toll on the prince: he is delivered into Keith’s arms with shattered memories and a cursed metal arm, his confidence shaken and his throne usurped, and the ill-boding news of the long-dormant Galra Empire’s imminent invasion. Keith is resolved to stay by his prince’s side this time, no matter the cost— even as their search for answers leads them to the very heart of enemy territory.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For the Sheith Big Bang 2018! Loosely Dragon Age/Arslan Senki-inspired fantasy AU.  
> Thank you Jamm & Ky for being heroes and beta-ing for me! And Grey for being an inspirational artist and friend! :)

In the long hours of the night

When hope has abandoned me,

I will see the stars and know

Your Light remains.

  _Chant of Light, Canticle of Trials_

★-☆-★-☆-★

 

These lands have a name, though Keith has found that few maps seem to agree on what it is. 

They call it the Ariz Wastes on carefully charted royal maps that span wartables, penned following rigorous surveys of the kingdom. That’s what Keith calls it, too, whenever someone looks at him askew and asks where he hails from.

Less meticulous cartographers name it as the barrens, the borderlands, the fringes, the cusp. It varies from region to region, mouth to mouth, and no one seems to agree on much other than it being the arse-end of Arus, fit only for thieves’ hideaways and deserters’ shacks. The ragged strip of deprived, underpopulated land runs between Arus’ bountiful heartlands and the southern border that the kingdom shares with the ancient, blighted empire of the Galra.

The Ariz Wastes encompasses everything from reedy, yellowed grasslands to cracked, red earth and hazy, smoke-filled canyons, and every inch of the borderlands is a trial meant to test those who dare to tread here. And it was in a place just like this— not far, actually, from where Keith currently rides atop a black stallion that puts most draft horses to shame— that Keith had spent his early childhood learning the tricks of the trade from his father.

He’s home, in a sense. But the desolation feels emptier than he’s ever known it.

Ages past, lions roamed across these dry plains. The Shirogane clan still bears one of the creatures on their crest— winged and roaring— and emblazons it on everything from coins to barrels of beer and rice wine. The creatures flank university steps in statue form, recumbent and regal, and guard the entrance of the palace with barred fangs. Even the night sky is dominated by the lion constellation named for the first Shirogane king, Shishimaru.

But they’d been hunted to near extinction, just like the dragons, in the earliest days of the Galra Empire. Trophy-hunting humans had finished them off over the following centuries, leaving only the memory of their likeness.

And now Keith finds himself drawn to hidden places across the empty wastelands, where caves and outcroppings still retain carvings of lions, those creatures he knows only from legend and the sigil of Shiro’s house; where script in a language he can’t read still speaks to him; where he never finds answers, but more questions to spur him on toward the next site devoted to the ancient lion goddess and her servants.

“Shabrang,” Keith intones as the willful horse underneath him begins to turn, resisting the pressure of the bit across his tongue and Keith’s gentle tugs at the reins. “I know, I know... I’m not Shiro,” he consoles while stroking the side of his mount’s neck, over the thickly corded muscle and a pitch-black coat gone dull from the ever-present dust. “But you’ll keep being good for me, won’t you?”

A rattling snort answers Keith, and Shabrang falls back into an obedient step, his ears flicking back occasionally to listen whenever Keith muses aloud about some rock formation in the distance, or whistles the first notes of a half-remembered song, or notes how close they are to a watering spot.

His camp that night is lonesome, even with Shabrang’s company. Keith dutifully consults his map and notes the day’s progress in his battered journal, his script still blocky and uneven despite all of Shiro’s patient lessons and the (far less patient) threats of his tutor. A growing hole along the seam of his pants requires mending and Keith hurries to finish the task before the sun sinks completely beyond the western sea.

The last matter he sets himself to before bedding down against Shabrang for the night is the most important. It’s as much an act of comfort as one of necessity, and Keith carries it out with with reverence.

Cross-legged before the tiny fire he scraped together, Keith unsheathes his sword and lays the bare blade across his thighs. Its leather-wrapped grip is assurance against his fingers. Its weight offers stability, a piece of the past he can hold: a precious, dulled glimmer of everything that is now lost to him.

The sword he carries once belonged to Shiro— one of many that the prince had outgrown over the years— and though it is of surpassing quality, recent months have been hard on the blade. All of Keith’s careful maintenance has been outstripped by the frequency of his encounters with bandits and beasts, and there are at least a few worrying nicks in the forged steel that he can no longer smooth out with just a whetstone.

If he were still at the palace, he’d have replaced it by now. Or taken it to the forge, to be reworked anew. If he were still at the palace, Shiro would be there too, and the prince would have stepped in to offer Keith a new blade at the first sign of damage. A nicked sword is a death sentence with no defined date. That fact hovers at the back of Keith’s mind in every skirmish he risks, whispering that this might be the clash that catches the blade just right, shatters it just so. It’s compromised, and trusting it could get him killed.

Still… Keith trails his fingers down the hilt and crossguard with fondness; he pinches the red-dyed horsehair that dangles from the pommel and remembers better times. Which is worse, he wonders— to keep gambling on a flawed blade, or to retire the sword and continue to lug its considerable weight around for the rest of the journey? Either way, he can’t bear the thought of parting with it. He blames Shiro for that much. Keith had never been sentimental prior to his time at the palace.

In fairness, he had never had all that much to be attached to before. His few mementos of his father were stolen shortly after his arrival in the capital, and it was only by turning his mother’s dagger on would-be thieves that Keith had managed to keep possession of it. He’d grown accustomed to having little. Less to keep meant less to lose, after all, but Shiro’s frequent gift-giving had upended all of that.

The memory of Shiro’s smile as he had opened up his personal weapons chamber to Keith remains as clear and perfect as crystal— as warm and even as the forge fires that never go cold, white as the bone and ivory inlaid on the pommels and crossguards of the myriad weapons hanging on the walls. There had been something in that smile that had left Keith’s mind in a fuzzy heat and his palms too damp to handle a sword with his usual deftness.

Shiro had glowed as Keith wondered and marveled at the array of weapons, each one a masterwork— the daggers that the prince found too light, the claymores he considered too unwieldy, the bows he had grown too tall for. With a coy look that suggested he’d been waiting on this moment for some time, the prince had offered Keith his pick of the room. And Keith had chosen a narrow, single-edged sword in the style so favored by Shirogane warriors, its blade ribboned with dark streaks— which lasted all of a week before Keith broke the fine, narrow tip clean off during a training spar. He’d gone through several swords in the interim, experimenting with materials and weights and styles, but nothing had ever suited him as well as the blade he chose just before departing for the Garrison.

The same one he still carries with him now, battered and broken across his lap, its gleam worn away by battle and ever-present dust, good for little else than comfort.

Keith has a sneaking suspicion that this one hadn’t been just another of Shiro’s cast-offs, like the rest. He’d never seen the red-accented sword before that fateful day and it _feels_ custom-made: perfect in his hand, the length and balance of the blade just right for him, the design and accents all far closer to Keith’s tastes than Shiro’s. The prince’s smug, self-satisfied smile as Keith had made a beeline for the sword is probably the most telling sign.

Keith stares past the fire as he makes long, careful strokes meant to recover some of the sword’s integrity. But the little chip from an encounter with several giant Khopesh scorpions is beyond salvageable, no matter how many times he tries to smooth the the edge, and Keith wonders if his mother’s dagger alone will be enough to see him through the rest of this journey, wherever it takes him.

Beyond his little campfire and the long shadows of dusk, the horizon grows dark and smudged along the border of the Galra Empire. It lies somewhere across wide canyons and treacherous ravines that mark Arus’ natural border— a continent-sprawling swath of land comprised of conquered territories, with the ancient kingdom of Daibazaal somewhere at its heart. In legend, it’s known that Daibazaal betrayed and savaged its sister kingdom, Altea. Over the millennia that followed the empire grew vast and bloated and then, for reasons unknown, _silent._ Only rumors— and hulking, vicious beasts of unnatural creation— emerge from the decaying empire these days, usually by way of travelers from the east.

And the rumors are grand. That the Galra emperor achieved immortality. That he has ruled for ten-thousand years, with a cadre of witches and druids at his side. That the blood magic used to secure the emperor’s longevity and aid them in battle taints the land itself, curses its people, and still hungers for more. That the Galra know only bloodlust and cruelty, and their empire is home to monsters of every make and kind.

That night, Keith sleeps facing the Devil’s Divide and the empire that looms beyond it, wary of turning his back on a place so damned.

At the rise of a new day, his journey continues as it has for weeks, with sun and dust and dry winds. A distant call hooks Keith between the ribs whenever he begins to feel like he’s doing little more than wandering aimlessly, drawing him onward in the hopes of satisfying the strange yearning it kindles. It’s a fleeting feeling, and more than a little desperate, but he has nothing and no one else to follow.

Into the morning, Keith spies a flurry in the distance— red dust kicked up by a speedy horse, a blur thundering across the plain with something lean and reptilian in pursuit.

Under him, Shabrang snorts and stomps uneasily.

“Relax,” Keith soothes, running a gloved hand down the side of his massive steed’s neck. “We’re not getting involved.”

But the plight of the wild horse tugs his eye again, pity gripping his heart as he watches its desperate flight from the slithering creatures nipping at its heels. Keith grabs his bow— while telling himself that it’s a matter of practicality, as the same desert monitors could turn their attention to him and Shabrang next anyway— and nudges Shiro’s mount toward the action.

The heavy warhorse was bred for intimidation and armored battle, and the thundering of his hoofbeats rattles the dry earth and keeps Keith bouncing in the worn saddle he salvaged off of a bleached skeleton. Shabrang is well-trained—and fiercely loyal, having borne only two riders in his life—and responds to Keith’s subtle, instinctual nudge immediately. His gait smoothes out as he turns to gallop parallel to the wild horse currently being run ragged.

Keith appreciates Shabrang’s patient assistance. The bow’s never been his strongest skill and it takes longer than Shiro’s old arms master would’ve tolerated for Keith to line up his first shot.

He strikes the first serpentine creature through the head, stopping it instantly. The other kills come sloppy, wasting arrows. As he lowers the bow and tucks his quiver away, Keith sees the red-coated horse still galloping into the distance, the dust stirred by her frantic gait picked up by the wind and carried into a cloud-studded sky.

It works out for the best, though. After a little skinning and cleaning, Keith has enough meat for his next six meals and glimmering, hard-scaled skins to trade later on for more sustainable rations.

As the sun rises higher, its glaringly pale light sears its way across the barren flats, forcing Keith to squint. The crimson cloth wrapped around the bottom half of his throat protects him from inhaling the worst of the dry plains’ red dust, but the arid wind still leaches at his skin and leaves his eyes irritated and dry. Red-rimmed, probably, judging by the sting of each and every blink.

More than a little miserable, he stops and settles down under a shady outcropping on top of a ridge that offers a view of the land ahead and carefully charts his progress. After a little back-and-forth between his map, the sun, and a few visible landmarks, Keith is pleased to realize he’s not terribly far from his father’s patch of land and the little shack house they had shared for the earliest years of Keith’s life. It’s ironic, almost, that he should end up back here.

Or maybe it’s just to be expected. He had entertained some grand notions while in Shiro’s company— a knighthood, a purpose worth living and dying for, a life beyond a scrappy existence in the borderlands— but it seems his fate is, as so many detractors told him, as unremarkable as any man of common birth’s. Another day’s ride, perhaps, and he might at least sleep under some semblance of a roof. The little shack he grew up in is likely dusty and derelict, but four walls would be welcome. If the well still has water and the pump still works, he might even be fortunate enough to bathe for the first time in a week and rinse off the layer of grit on his skin.

Keith is markedly less pleased, as the sun slowly shifts past noon, to see a column of soldiers appear on the horizon, dust whipping wildly behind their hurried mounts. Heavy wagons bring up the rear, and the riders appear of one mind as they race through the otherwise desolate barrens.

“Where are they headed?” Keith muses to Shabrang, a hand held up to shield his eyes from the glare of the sun. The orange and white banner that furls from a standard carried by of the distant riders only deepens his misgivings. “Garrison. But that doesn’t look like a training run to me…”

With a quick inventory check of Shabrang’s saddlebags— paying special consideration to the pouch he’s been collecting saltpeter in during his periodic cave-crawls— Keith mounts up and trots his horse along at an easy, distant follow, keeping a keen eye on the Garrison soldiers. The sun is dipping low by the time the company reaches a camp comprised of several hastily erected tents. From a safe distance, Keith watches as none other than Knight-Commander Iverson swings off of his exhausted stallion and storms into the largest of the four main tents— one big enough to be fit for royalty on a war campaign.

The air here stirs something in Keith. His heart begins to sing the way it always does in battle and well-matched spars, and there’s that familiar feeling in his gut, pushing him to action before a picture of a plan is even fully formed in his head. He only knows that he needs to be in that tent too, and quickly.

He clambers down from Shabrang and bids the horse to stay put, safely away from danger. With a few tools— his dagger, his bow, flint, the saltpeter, and other necessities— he darts quickly across the open plains, relying on dusk and the occasional boulder to help keep his cover as he messily mixes up one of the first incendiaries his father taught him to make.

Hiding them strategically around the camp is simple enough. Most of the soldiers milling around the watchfires are making small talk to fill the silence of the nighttime wastes, clinging closer to the flames as the temperature quickly falls. It’s the handful of knights and officers positioned nearest the central tent that give him cause to worry— at grim attention, spears held at the ready. Tensions are highest at the center of the camp, as though they fear some attack from within, and the foot soldier patrols that ring the encampment are almost lax by comparison.

Keith uses it to his advantage. He gets close enough to tuck his makeshift flashbombs along the outer ring of the camp, behind the orderly row of tents where half the soldiers are already bedded down for the night, and under a heavy, iron-barred wagon. It’s the sort they cart criminals and prisoners-of-war around in, and Keith can only wonder at who it’s meant to house.

Timing his first shot is trickier business than planting the bombs. The guards don’t notice as Keith lights an arrow behind the cover of a natural, stony pillar, but they certainly take heed when it triggers the first set of explosions some two-hundred yards in the distance.

In the chaos that follows, half the Garrison knights and soldiers immediately scramble to mount up and hunt down their attacker; it’s then that Keith steps out and takes his second and third shots. Saltpeter flashbombs detonate closer to the camp proper, sending the horses into a dizzying panic and their riders tumbling to the earth. Keith hits the bomb under the nearby wagon last, and the quaking rattle and falling debris send the horses bolting through camp, around and over the tents, stampeding into the darkened wastes.

And that’s when Keith shoulders his bow and picks his way through the teeming wreckage of the camp, slipping silently into the royalty-sized tent at its heart. It’s far from empty, and Keith immediately assumes a fighting stance as he lays eyes on three men of meaner size.

Knight-Commander Iverson’s startled gape turns to fury in the blink of an eye. “What are _you_ doing here?!”

Keith matches whatever outrage his old commander has mustered three-times over. It’s more instinct than anything else that directs his fist into Iverson’s face, his knuckles aching under the pressure as he splits a bone in the knight-commander’s cheek.

Hand-to-hand is Keith’s specialty. He remembers telling Iverson as much— back when he was up before a panel of knight-officers and Garrison instructors, making a case for admittance into the elite institution with Shiro standing resolutely behind him— and there is something viscerally pleasing about putting it into effect. A grunt heaves out of Keith as he takes Iverson by the arm and swings him into one of the other attending officers, knocking them both out cold.

The last man standing comes at Keith with a lean surgical knife and wild-eyed fear. It’s a cruel-looking apothecary’s tool, no doubt meant for the body lying on the table like a corpse on a mortuary slab. Keith effortlessly kicks it from the man’s outstretched hand and then slams his shin into the guard’s chest, sending him flying over a roughly hewn wooden table arrayed with saws and heavy needles.

There are shouts outside the heavy hide walls of the tent, but for a breathless eternity, Keith can’t hear them. Or anything, except for the nearly painful beating of his heart and a sound like rushing water that fills his ears, drowning out everything that could otherwise distract him from the man bound to the makeshift table at the tent’s center.

Keith’s legs weaken underneath him, his steps staggered as if he is walking with a gut-wound. He tugs at the red fabric shielding the lower half of his face— now tinted a burnt orange by the desert dust, the material stiff with dried sweat— and his chapped, cracked lips part in a silent gasp.

With care, Keith gently grips the man’s chin to angle his head toward the light of the oil-lamp hanging overhead. Dizzy with the impossibility that this could be real— not just a fantasy conjured by his mind as he wastes in the desert heat, nor a fevered dream to make him lie awake until dawn, consumed with fallen hopes— Keith draws in a shaking, broken breath that does nothing to ease the tightness in his chest.

“Shiro?”

Keith strokes up the side of Shiro’s face, brushing aside the flakes of dried blood that pepper the tangled strands of his hair. His thumb passes just under the prince’s split lip, and at Shiro’s soft groan, Keith feels the too-familiar sting of tears at the corners of his eyes.

It’s Shiro stretched before him in some cruel twist on a miracle. Scarred, bloodied, with a shock of white hair, his skin gone pale underneath the discolored cuts and green-tinted bruises and the desert’s red dust. Battered, unconscious _Shiro_ , somehow a captive of his own people.

The familiar weight of his mother’s dagger finds its way to Keith’s palm, and in a heartbeat he slits the leather bindings that tie Shiro to the table. Once freed, it’s just a matter of dragging him back to Shabrang without being caught, and from there—

“Hey, I know you,” a voice says from behind him. It carries pinched irritation layered on top of suspicion, which is a tone Keith is familiar with— if not with this particular speaker. “You’re that commoner from the palace that slipped your way into the Garrison. Back to thieving already, huh?”

Keith turns back to the entrance, jaw already set as he hunts for a way to safety that doesn’t entail leaving Shiro vulnerable. The tent’s opening is blocked by three Garrison cadets— knights aspiring to high military service or interested in forging connections through the distinguished order of Garrison graduates, which happens to include every Shirogane ruler in the last two-hundred years.

“Oh, no, no, no, no,” the voice continues. It belongs to a man around Keith’s height and build, though a little lankier and less sure of his stance, with darker skin and a purse-lipped scowl that reads like personal vendetta. He waves the pointed tip of a standard-issue Garrison spear inches from Keith’s face. “Listen up, _deserter_. I don’t know what the hell you’re after, but you’re not making off with— holy shit! Is that Prince Takashi?!”

“I thought he was dead,” the big man to his left whispers, brown eyes round with worried surprise. “I mean, isn’t he? Wasn’t he? That whole expedition he led to the hinterlands was doomed—”

The whole line of questions slides under Keith’s skin like a flaying knife, lacing his nerves in fire. Few things can test his temper like insinuations about Shiro or reminders of his disappearance.

“Who the hell are you?” Keith snarls back, angling himself to better shield Shiro as all three of the Garrison knights try to leer at the unconscious prince.

“Uh, Lance Vela Rivera. Of the House of Rivera. My family owns most of the Varaderian Coast and half the royal fleet,” the vaguely familiar looking Garrison cadet continues, clearly vexed by Keith’s lack of recognition. His spear lowers by a degree. “We were neck-and-neck at the Garrison!”

Keith shuffles again when he hears a faint groan from the man he’s holding. As uncertain as he is of how to dispatch the trio of young nobility while Shiro’s limp body is wrapped in his arms, he knows even less about how to deal with Lance Vela Rivera’s claims.

The big man on Lance’s left flank shifts, his hands flexing nervously around the grip of a Stone Island warhammer that stands as tall as the small knight-cadet just behind him. “You, uh, knocked him on his ass during your first spar. And the second one. All of them, actually. I’m Hunk, by the way. And that’s Pidge.”

“Don’t recall it,” Keith admits, truthfully lost. Two years at the Garrison meant hundreds of sparring matches, armed and unarmed, and he had rarely been bested. After an appraising look at Lance’s wary stance, he adds, “You look like an archer, anyway.”

Lance’s cheeks flush dark as the assumption strikes true. “Yeah, well, _I am_. But after you deserted, I rose into the master swordsman class, too.”

“Congratulations,” Keith says dryly. Outside, the sounds of frightened horses and shouts prevail; the light dancing against the heavy fabric suggests a fire’s broken out, spreading from tent to tent. “Look, I don’t want to fight any of you. Let me pass. If you still care about your prince, you’ll let us go.”

“Of course we care about Prince Takashi,” Lance replies, his eyes narrowed. There is an uncertain tremble in his hands as he levels his spear at Keith again. It isn’t his weapon of choice, clearly, and the memories of one-sided sparring matches at the Garrison must be playing at the back of his mind. “That’s why we won’t be leaving him in _your_ hands. We’re taking him back—”

“Back where?” Keith questions, bristling as he edges forward. His teeth snap on the words, even as his touch snakes possessively around the unconscious man in his arms. “To the Garrison? To the capital? Have you forgotten that there’s not a Shirogane on the throne anymore? Just a bunch of usurping generals—”

“ _His_ generals,” Lance interjects, his gaze falling to the sleeping prince.

“Maybe once,” Keith says, re-angling himself to hide his hand as he moves slowly for the dagger tucked into his belt. As distraction, he kicks at the wickedly-shaped surgical blades scattered under him, sending them sliding past Iverson and the unconscious Garrison officers to stop at Lance’s feet. “But not anymore. The Garrison was doing this on _someone’s_ orders.”

“And trying to keep it quiet,” Pidge says, narrow golden brows pinching together.

Keith presses it, focusing on Lance. “Are you certain they would step aside for him? Freely relinquish the power they’ve gotten used to? Would you stake your prince’s life on it, _Ser Lance_?”

Lance falters, paling at the thought. Blue eyes dart down to where Shiro is slumped in Keith’s arms, scarred and likely drugged; reddened marks from the bindings remain around his wrists, and fresh blood runs freely from a small, precise incision along a bared portion of his shoulder.

Hunk looks to Keith and speaks up quietly, something mournful and reluctant in the tone of his words. “You really think they would kill their own prince?”

The answer seems clear enough to Lance. With a hitched, heavy sigh, he closes his eyes and lowers his spear. “Let’s go. We’ll cover you and Prince Takashi,” he decides as he turns back to the entrance, beckoning the others to follow. He glances back at Keith over his shoulder. “Do you have a horse?”

It only takes a whistle to summon Shabrang once they’re outside the tent. Hunk hovers protectively close, murmuring nervously as he watches Keith’s back. Lance keeps the handful of advancing soldiers at bay with non-lethal arrows while Pidge wards them away with broad sweeps of a whip.

Shiro’s horse arrives like thunder, nearly unseen in the full darkness of night, heralded only by the rolling beat of heavy hoof-falls. Keith heaves Shiro up and across Shabrang’s withers before clambering up into the saddle behind him, one hand on the reins and the other firm against the prince’s side. He barely waits for the others to call their horses and mount up before he digs his heels into Shabrang’s ribs and urges him into a full gallop that seems to quake the world around them.

The flight from the Garrison camp passes in a dark, wind-streaked blur that takes them through stony outcroppings and across salt flats, narrowly avoiding the pitfalls and treacheries of this region that Keith knows so well. The roundabout circuit helps them lose the handful of mounted Garrison knights in pursuit, either to felled horses or fear of the darkness and rough terrain. Perhaps the giant scorpion nests that dot the landscape serve as a deterrent, too.

The rush of desert wind drowns out most of Lance’s complaints and Hunk’s frantic worrying as Keith leads them over bluffs and through narrow trails. They follow him through the long swathes of shadow cast by looming, towering formations of risen stone that blot out the star-streaked skies; they falter at moments when Keith takes them down embankments along dry riverbeds and precipitous drops, but never for long. They journey into darkness for the sake of the prince, trusting Keith not to lead them astray.

And Keith is of a single purpose as he crosses the desert, following the stars toward his childhood home. He keeps one hand fixed to the spine-ridged span of Shiro’s back each step of the way, desperate to feel every breath he takes.

 

* * *

 

His father’s shack wasn’t made to suit five. It wasn’t made to house royalty, either.

Keith lays Shiro down on the lumpy, straw-filled bed, nose wrinkling with the sudden itch to sneeze as the layer of dust that accumulated over years suddenly spreads into the air. The bedding is threadbare and riddled with holes, and the mattress sags under their combined weight. Keith’s pack, stuffed with the few articles of clothing he possesses, serves as Shiro’s pillow; Shabrang’s dark saddle-blanket protects him from the worst of the desert night’s chill.

It is hardly fit for a prince. Or a king.

Keith cards his fingers through Shiro’s hair, hoping the gesture still comforts. Whatever title Shiro wears, it seems insignificant for the moment. Even now, the empty tomb erected for him in the Arusian capital is probably still buried under flowers and offerings for the beloved dead. The only people who know that Prince Takashi Shirogane still lives are the very same ones who want him out of contention for the throne— them and four wayward deserters from the Garrison, for whatever they’re worth.

A quiet rap on the doorframe draws Keith’s attention from the stark divide where Shiro’s snow-white hair meets his familiar ink-spun black. As he looks back, he continues to toy gently with the prince’s hair, idly picking through small tangles and spots matted with old blood.

Pidge— the shortest and smallest of them all, barely tall enough to clamber astride a horse— stands in the doorway to the modest bedroom, looking even smaller without their armor on. “Hey, Keith. Lance wants to, uh, talk. About what we’re doing with… him.”

“Is there really that much to be said?” Keith asks as he rises from the bed, careful not to jostle the sleeping prince. He dusts off his leathers and follows Pidge out to the common area to see the others, who are still unbuckling dusty armor and stripping down to sleep. “Obviously, we protect him. If you’re not up to the task, then leave it to me.”

Simply catching Lance’s eye is enough to draw his ire. While unlacing his fine boots, he fixes on Keith like he is as much an enemy to the prince as the Garrison soldiers they’d ditched back near the salt flats. “Like hell I’m leaving Prince Takashi in your hands. He needs _actual_ knights at his side.”

“Then why are you here?” Keith asks, tongue pressing to the back of his teeth in an effort to keep from saying more. His chance at alleviating some of the royal court’s indignation might’ve been dependent on proving himself at the Garrison, but he hardly needs an official sanction from the aristocracy to know that he can defend Shiro better than any wellborn noble he’s ever met. He, of anyone in this room, has closer ties to Shiro and more right to be by his side, and Keith thinks he just might manage to tear someone asunder if they try to part him from Shiro again.

“To give him what you never could,” Lance says, proud and cutting as he shucks off his boots and throws them beside his light greaves. “The backing of a noble house. The sworn fealty of two-dozen lesser houses willing to provide whatever support the prince needs. The means to raise an army. And the safety of a fortified castle rather than a _shack_.”

The severity behind the clench of Keith’s jaw brings black and stars behind his eyes, if only for a moment. He watches as Lance flicks a clump of dust from the arm of the chair he slouches in, disdainful. “You can sleep outside, then. Or go home to your _castle_.”

Hunk hisses something at Lance before he can retort, the snap succeeding in quieting the archer into sullenness. Settled on a pallet in the corner with his yellow-and-orange saddle-blanket thrown over himself like a shroud, Hunk looks up at Keith and manages a fairly warm smile. “Sorry, Keith. The hospitality is appreciated, y’know, for what it is. It’s just… Lance is tired, and worried, and afraid. We all are.”

Keith swallows his lingering anger and nods along, looking at each of them in turn: Pidge, curled into a ball beside Hunk and already nodding off; Hunk, head drooped low as he goes over their meager Garrison-issued rations; Lance, eyes squeezed shut and worry-lines drawn between his brows. It isn’t hard to muster some pity. They aren’t companions by choice, but the rapid turns of circumstance. They’re younger and fresher from the Garrison, too, and have friends and family to miss and be missed by in return.

And Keith knows well what it’s like to handle loss and abrupt change poorly. He sighs as he leans back against the post of the doorway, arms loosely crossed as he watches Lance gradually deflate.

“I’m exhausted,” Lance mutters minutes later, dragging his hand down his face and slumping back even further in his chair.

“Then do us all a favor and go to bed,” Keith says, his eyebrows lifting even as the rest of his expression remains flat. “Please. I promise I won’t kill any of you in your sleep, okay?”

Lance’s lips quirk to one side. He crosses his arms, too, and stares up at Keith, shadows stark under his eyes. “What if you make off with Prince Takashi?”

“And go where?” Keith asks, his voice soft and brittle even to his own ears. “This is my home. Even if he were fit for travel— even if Shabrang wasn’t spent— I’d have nowhere else safe to take him. It’s like you said...”

That seems to reassure Lance, at least, even if it leaves Keith feeling woefully incapable of protecting Shiro as he’d always promised he would.

“Aren’t you tired, Keith?” Hunk questions, a yawn chasing his own words.

Keith shrugs. Stamina is one of his strong suits— one of the various attributes that Keith had never realized he held in spades until Shiro’s arms master and retainers pointed it out, baffled by his preternatural tenacity and endurance in the sparring ring. “A little, I guess.”

Lance grumbles as he curls into a ball on the sole upholstered chair, with his saddle blanket— all wave patterns in the characteristic blues of the Vela Rivera family— wrapped tightly around him.

“Don’t try anything sly, Keith,” he murmurs, fighting the droop of his eyelids just to keep glaring at their host. “Watching you…”

Keith rolls his eyes and bids Hunk goodnight instead. Though wary, the big Stone Islander at least seems amenable to the notion that Keith isn’t just a cutthroat ready to whisk Shiro away for some nefarious end.

Entering his father’s old bedroom still puts snares on Keith’s heart, prickling at the softest parts of him like nettles blooming in between the cords of his muscle. Wistfulness catches him twofold in this room he’s known from his earliest memories, always filled with the scent of oil and leather and desert herbs. He half-fears that he’ll round the corner and see the bed empty, that he’ll find Shiro’s been drawn up into the heavens like kings and heroes sometimes are in legend, made immortal in the shape of stars that Keith could never reach.

And so relief slakes through him at the sight of Shiro still stretched across the mattress, still mortal and earthbound, head tossed to one side and one foot jutting out from under the cover of Shabrang’s saddle-blanket. Keith settles in beside him for the remainder of the night, one hand softly splayed across the prince’s chest. It’s for peace of mind— that he might feel Shiro’s breaths and the solidity of him to reassure himself that all isn’t lost.

In the nighttime stillness, Keith loses track of the time. He listens, alert for the thud of approaching hoofbeats or human cries, but his mind’s eye wanders to old memories dredged up simply by being home again. The first hare he’d skinned, messily, with his father’s bloodied hands guiding his own. Nights spent hunting, the stars guiding them across the plains. The hours spent honing knife skills and playing games that consisted of hitting increasingly small and difficult targets.

Underneath his hand, something shifts.

“Keith?” Still half-dazed, still a little lost in whatever hazy dreamworld holds him in its grip, Shiro’s eyes blink open and fix on Keith like he’s a beacon in a fog. “ _Keith._ ”

The recognition— the _relief_ — in Shiro’s demeanor turns Keith’s entire heart molten, like the steel in the royal forges Shiro used to lead him through as they talked weaponcraft. Keith hadn’t even known his heart had turned hard, but now the warmth of it runs down between his ribs, sinks into his blood, burns under his skin. It’s the feeling of coming alive again after a hard and lasting winter.

Shiro stares up at him with the same sense of troubled wonder. Of hope-fraught disbelief. Of desperate gratitude, barely contained. His bruised lips part and close, the cords along his throat flexing wordlessly, and Keith knows the tear-rimmed look in his eye too well— he’d felt it there in that Garrison tent upon laying eyes on his prince for the first time in a year, after resigning himself to a life where he would only ever again see Shiro in his dreams or carven stone. Shiro looks at Keith as if the sight of him is too perfect to be possible. As if it makes no sense, after how hard every moment and every mile of the last year has been, to be so freely given the one person he yearns for most. As if reaching out to touch him might cause the illusion to shatter into moondust and starlight, leaving him alone in the darkness again.

“I’m here, Shiro,” Keith answers through a swell of emotion that makes his throat pinch tight, immediately meeting Shiro’s searching grasp with something just as frantic. Their hands catch together, palm-to-palm, fingers curling and hooking to hold fast. Keith clenches tight, tempted to never let go again. “I’m right here with you.”

That they can do this again seems like a miracle out of legend, too chance to be anything but destiny or divine intervention: a last minute reprieve granted by the gods taking pity on a mortal’s broken heart. It’s the kind of thing that Keith once scoffed at during the tear-jerking plays Shiro used to drag him to, all dressed up in the heavy silks of formal attire and bored out of his mind as the prince sat enraptured by some sappy love story.

“ _How_?” Shiro croaks, gaze still tracing over Keith’s face— down his jaw, up to his dry and windswept hair, lingering over his eyes.

“Just lucky, I guess.” Keith squeezes Shiro’s knuckles before working his hand free to reach for the small tin cup sitting on a crate beside the bed. “Here, drink this.”

“Water?”

“Water.” Keith nods as Shiro slowly sits up and sips a little at a time, until Keith is tipping the very last of it into his mouth. “Are you hungry?”

Still lying back on the makeshift pillow of Keith’s pack, Shiro shakes his head. Blindly, he hunts for Keith’s grasp again, his strong, callused fingers trembling as they trail over the suntanned skin across the back of Keith’s hand.“Where are we?”

Despite the comfort of Shiro’s warm hand wrapped around his, Keith grimaces. “This is where I grew up, actually. You’re in my dad’s bed.”

“Oh. _Oh_ ,” Shiro murmurs, glancing down at the rest of himself— stretched out long under Shabrang’s dusty saddle-blanket— before squinting around the rest of the small, darkened bedroom.

There is a section of missing roof near the far corner, between the sagging beams across the ceiling, where shafted moonlight falls, silvery and shimmering as it catches on drifting dust. Through the gap, a little piece of the night sky looks down upon them, curled together on the old straw mattress.

“We’re in the Ariz Wastes, then,” Shiro reasons out, still drowsy from whatever Iverson’s soldiers gave him to keep him docile. His brow knits tight as he sifts through Keith’s childhood stories to place their exact location. “Near the salt flats? Close to the border. And this place was home?”

“Yep. Home sweet home,” Keith says, thumping the bed for effect. It sends a plume of dust billowing up, causing the both of them to cough and blink away the fine grains. “Not much of a homecoming, though, is it? Nothing like the fanfare at the palace.”

Shiro’s hand slips from his to work its way up to Keith’s face, his touch featherlight over the younger man’s jaw and fine cheekbones. It’s testing, as if to reassure himself that Keith is no hopeful figment of his imagination.

“I couldn’t ask for better,” Shiro says, fingertips combing through Keith’s hair, tucking strands behind his ear. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am to see you again, Keith.”

Keith covers Shiro’s hand with his own, pressing the prince’s palm firmer against his cheek. “Same here.”

In the lapse of silence that follows, Keith can distinctly hear two sets of snoring from the other room. Shiro hears it, too, and stills beside him. There is sharp apprehension in the young prince as he asks, “Who is that?”

“Three others who’ve deserted the Garrison, too. Can’t recall their names right now,” Keith answers, lodging himself closer to Shiro, “but I think they’re okay. You’ll meet them in the morning.”

“You left the Garrison?” Shiro asks, a thick eyebrow arching. Dried blood clings to its dark curve, and there are rust-colored flakes caught in the prince’s long lashes.

Keith closes his eyes for a moment, swallowing down the dry rasp in his throat before attempting to speak. “I’m so sorry, Shiro,” he says, leaning forward in an earnest plea. “I know how much you went through to get me admitted, and the last thing I wanted to do was throw that all away, but…”

An ugly bruise along Shiro’s jaw nearly masks the subtle quirk of his mouth, but it does nothing to disguise the fondness in the man’s dark eyes. “Keith, if you left, it was with good reason. And now you’re here,” Shiro adds, his smile a bright spot in the midst of their bleak predicament. “I’m not sure what would’ve become of me if you hadn’t shown up.”

They’ve shared close sleeping quarters before— in cramped inns during expeditions to the northern fortresses, huddled close for warmth in snowy war camps, on nights after near assassination attempts, when their adrenaline ran too high for sleep and it felt like death still lingered close, waiting, its rattling breaths almost audible. But those times never felt like this.

Taking comfort in being near Shiro isn’t new, but wanting to twine around him like the leather that wraps a hilt _is_. A side-effect of losing him, Keith supposes. He aches to curl around his prince and insulate him from the world at large, which has never seemed quite so large or dangerous or daunting as it does now. He swallows thickly as he turns on the mattress, better angling himself toward the man’s familiar shape, keeping as little distance between them as he dares. The knight runs his hand through Shiro’s shaggy, two-toned hair, smoothing his thumb up over the prince’s temple, along the dark of his hairline, down around the curved shell of his ear.

Shiro’s tired eyes flutter shut, the long, silky lashes that frame them spreading beautifully over the heights of his cheeks. The last thing Keith wants is to see them wet with tears, if by chance Shiro’s moved to that, but he can think of no way around the news he has to deliver.

“I have to tell you something, Shiro,” Keith whispers, the cords in his throat already tying themselves into knots. It won’t become any easier if he waits, though. “About your mother.”

“My mother?” Those dark eyes open again, already bleak. “I assumed… that is, no matter how I might’ve disappointed her, she’d never have sent the Garrison to receive me like this.”

“No,” Keith agrees, still working his fingers through the short spikes of the prince’s hair, his touch dipping down to help wick away the wet glimmer at the corners of Shiro’s eyes. “Not long after you went missing, she... she fell ill. I heard she passed within a week.”

Keith lets Shiro recover from the news, unsure of what else to say. Unsure of what he’s _supposed_ to say at a time like this. He’d been so young when he lost his own mother that he couldn’t recall how his own father had consoled him; and after losing his father, there had been no one left to offer him any kind words or solace.

“I’m so sorry, Shiro,” he tries, stretching his arm over Shiro and pulling him closer. His hand finds the scarred swell of the prince’s bicep and gently squeezes there, his thumb working circles over the unusual fabric of his tattered, dirt-smeared sleeve.

Shiro nods, mostly to himself, eyes slipping shut again. “Thank you, Keith.”

Keith makes a soft sound of acknowledgement, his hands roving as he endeavors to pass along some comfort to Shiro. The prince’s delicate lids are soft as Keith lightly smooths the pad of his thumb across them; he traces the ridge of Shiro’s browbone, works over the tight furrow of his forehead. Keith draws his nails lightly across Shiro’s scalp, trailing all the way back to his nape, where he rubs gently along the column of his spine.

Keith isn’t privy to the true details of Queen Eboshi’s death, but gossips lamented that she’d died of a broken heart, devastated by the loss of her only child. It hardly sounds like her— the Iron Queen, that steely woman Keith had only glimpsed a handful of times during his years in the palace at Shiro’s side, as imposing and stiff as the statues that bear her likeness— but grief can work powerful horrors over people.

For Keith, the first long months without Shiro had been like missing a stair and never again finding his footing, as if the entire world had shifted and left him perpetually out-of-sync with everything and everyone else. More so than usual, at least. It had been disorienting. Sickening, at times. An abyss had been born somewhere behind his ribs, as deep and hungry as the ravines that stretched across the Devil’s Divide, swallowing up everything inside of him but his long-burning anger— and then, eventually, even that as well.

And maybe something similar had stricken Queen Eboshi. Maybe she had felt that same interior ache, that empty longing. Maybe she too had wept in frustration, wishing it were only a dagger to the heart, because that at least would either kill or heal in time. No half-measures that felt like undeath, no phantom pains without a cure.

“What happened?” Keith asks, finally, looking into the tiny specks of moonlight glimmering across the prince’s dark eyes. They had always been like that— nearly full-black in the dim of night, light catching in the dark of his irises like the stars fixed in the sky. “Where did you go, Shiro?”

A sigh ghosts across Keith’s skin, tickling at his nose and lips, a testament to how close they lay facing one another.

“I remember so little, Keith,” he admits, a crease forming between his thick eyebrows. “The Galra took me. They kept me for— I had no idea how long, until I got back here. It’s been a year, hasn’t it? Gods, I don’t even remember how I escaped,” Shiro says, a laugh with no humor slipping out afterward.

“The Galra?” Keith questions, his heart skipping. A half-forgotten thing, kept alive in cautionary tales; everyone knew that monsters roamed the Devil’s Divide, but the Galra hadn’t been sighted in this half of the world in millennia— not that he harbors a single doubt toward Shiro’s claim. “They gave you all these scars?”

“And this, too,” the prince continues, rolling back to reveal the arm he’d kept out of sight, worked under the covers to keep it hidden. It gleams silver and oily black in the night, maliciousness carved into the claw-tipped fingers and the runes that encircle the metal. “I know fuck-all about this. Same as everything else lately, it seems.”

Shiro rotates the Galra-made arm slowly and Keith finds himself entranced by the foreign material, the alien script imbued with a faint magenta glow, the wicked precision of every plate and joint connected by the seam of liquid darkness that lies just beneath. It’s evidence of their tampering with Shiro, an unmistakable work of dark and forbidden blood magic. So strange to look upon, strange to touch, and yet Keith can’t quite bring himself to stop doing either. The flesh and blood he’d felt a thousand times— in training, clasped as they pulled each other up to their feet, as Shiro helped him practice his handwriting, tending scraped knuckles after battle— is gone. Just… gone.

The prince had always had problems with his dominant sword arm, ever since Keith had known him. It was in some way tied to the intractable illness that sometimes left Shiro confined to his bed for spells— a closely guarded palace secret, known only to loyal retainers and a few trusted palace servants who would tend to the prince when he was unwell. It was why Shiro had stood with him in the training ring until sundown on his free days, determined to raise his proficiency with his left hand to something approximating Keith’s keen ambidextrousness. And over the years, Keith had developed a keen eye for Shiro’s miniscule winces and faltered swings, his sight razor-honed for any sign of the older boy’s strength failing him.

It extends even outside of combat. He charts the lines of worry writ across Shiro’s brow, the faint revulsion. It’s not his old illness plaguing him now, but something that Keith fears might run just as deep.

His prince is equally transfixed by his new and alien arm. The frustration and faint anger in his expression bleeds away, slow as blood flows in the frigid north, and leaves pale terror in its place. “They took my arm and gave me this, but I don’t know what it means, Keith. What it’s for. Why they did this to me.”

“Shiro…” Keith doesn’t have the words to string together to soothe him. It feels like he never does when the moment calls for it most.

“I’m afraid,” Shiro whispers to him, the tremble in his voice making Keith’s body shiver in kind. Even the near misses of would-be assassins never left him so shaken. “They’re going to come for me, Keith. They’ll find me here, and you as well. I can feel it—”

“And this time I’ll be at your side to protect you,” Keith answers, looping his arms around the prince’s neck and pressing himself flush against the larger man for lack of finer words to reassure him.

Keith can feel lips moving soft against the curve of his jaw, can hear his name being murmured, but his focus already lies a hundred leagues distant, at a point and a place he has never known. Over the slope of Shiro’s broad shoulder, through the dilapidated boards of his father’s desert shack, across the Ariz Wastes and the Devil’s Divide, Keith’s stare _burns_. In his mind’s eye, Keith imagines the squalid wilds of the rotting Galra empire, its decaying cities, its barbaric inhabitants.

His embrace tightens around Shiro— nearly crushing, although the man in his arms only buries his face deeper against the crook of Keith’s neck, his warm tears dripping their way down the bare slope of Keith’s clavicle— as he cobbles together a picture of the monsters responsible for his prince’s suffering, drawn from grim fairytales and legend and the decrepit historical texts his tutor once assigned him to copy. It transmutes the shivering of his limbs from empathetic fear to barely restrained fury; it leaves his mouth dry and acrid, his jaw clenched tight enough to make his ears ring.

And even as Shiro’s tears dry and exhaustion slowly pulls him back under, safe and secure in the arms of his most trusted friend, Keith’s chest smolders with a fury that threatens to eat him from the inside out.

 

* * *

 

Dawn hasn’t yet broken when Keith wakes Shiro and leads him outside to the bath.

He’d spent the better part of an hour pumping and warming the water, and then rummaging for soap in a cabinet that had long ago rusted shut from disuse. He’d gotten a few sets of clothing washed and hung to dry, too, feeling an acute sense of nostalgia as he restrung the clothesline and pinned the fresh laundry in place.

And now, with a small square of roughspun cloth in hand, Keith kneels beside the steaming tub as Shiro gingerly settles down, his legs bent and his knees crowning the water like mountain-topped islands amid a sea.

“Sorry it’s so small,” he apologizes as he runs the wet cloth across the span of the prince’s back, gentle as he works through layers of dirt and flaky, rust-colored blood, all sealed in dried sweat. Already the bathwater swirls dark and coppery, the pristine well-water turning cloudy opaque from the runoff.

Shiro gives him a grateful smile, tearing his attention away from the slow curling and uncurling of his metal fingers, the explorative twisting of his plated wrist. “Don’t,” he says, shaking his head. “This is the best thing to happen to me in _forever_ , Keith. Thank you.”

Keith pours from a bucket at his side to wet the prince’s hair before he works soapy lather into the dark strands. They’ve lost their usual silky feel, and it takes minutes for Keith to work his fingers through the dense knots made by dried, matted blood.

Years ago, when they’d first met, Shiro had worn his hair long. When loosed, it had fallen to the middle of his back in a dark curtain, catching the light like spiders’ threads; it had nearly always been tied back, though, sleek and regal, accented with delicate combs of silver and mother-of-pearl. It was all a matter of tradition, Keith learned later, after Shiro had shorn off his locks in some defiant act of rebellion before he reluctantly led an army north to settle a military campaign that had grown protracted and costly.

Shiro had seemed happier without the extra burden, anyway— no need for servants to fuss over his hair, less distraction in combat, fewer headaches from the tension. But Keith can’t deny that he misses the luxurious length of it. At least a little.

The prince’s hair has grown out over the last year, but it’s obviously been trimmed some time recently, if with a less-than-caring hand. And then there’s the color: bleached white as bone or lifeless ash, bleeding into the midnight black of the rest of his locks. Keith wonders if it will remain this way forever or if it will spread, leaching the color out of Shiro until he is as pale as the ghost that most of his subjects currently consider him to be.

If Keith lingers on washing Shiro’s hair, it’s only to give the prince a little longer to enjoy it. Who’s to say when they’ll next have a chance to relax like this?

Even with the desert wind and the pre-dawn chill, even squeezed into a rusted tin tub and riddled with fresh bruises, Shiro’s pleasure is obvious. His head tips back as he shuts his eyes, leaving the long column of his throat stretched and bared; a satisfied rumble resonates in his chest, rising to something just shy of a purr as Keith finds the tender spot an inch behind his ears. Shiro is still endearingly weak for touch— that much is the same as ever.

What isn’t the same is traced up and down the prince’s body, wrapped around his limbs, burrowed into his flesh. Heavy scarring— clearly left untreated after battle, grown knotted and discolored for lack of care— winds its way around every piece of Shiro. Their cruel and unusual shapes tell a story, and it’s not one Keith savors reading as he carefully scrubs at messily healed skin.

He lines his fingertips up with a trail of evenly spaced punctures around Shiro’s shoulder, puzzling over the pattern until it suddenly clicks.

“Shiro, what has jaws this big?” Keith questions, voice shrunken as small as he feels.

Shiro turns his head to consider the evidence carved into his own body, eyeing the semi-circle of inch-long scars. “I’m not sure,” he says, a frown twisting his lips. “I can hardly remember…”

There is a moment of hesitation as Shiro opens his mouth to say more, only to promptly shut it, caging his words behind teeth and sealed lips. It nearly passes too quick to note— a moment of weakness schooled into submission before it can be turned against him, a defense drilled into the prince long before Keith had known him— but the telltale signs of his discomfort linger. Keith knows the tightness in Shiro’s jaw from the wee morning hours after royal balls and celebrations, the little strum of his fingers from long nights at the wartable, the tiny crease that usually forms between his eyebrows as he debates whether speaking freely will be worth its cost.

“You can say whatever’s bothering you,” Keith reminds him.

“I’m sorry for not giving you proper warning,” Shiro says after a moment, soft as the breeze that catches the clothes hanging on the line and skitters across the prince’s exposed skin. He stares down into the water, studying its surface. The wicked talons of his new right arm click against the metal of the tub as he taps out a worried beat. “All I was thinking about was getting those rags off of me.”

“Don’t apologize.”

“This is the first time I’ve gotten a good look at myself,” Shiro continues, bleak as his current state. He angles his face at the rippling water, waiting for it to still again; his fingertips go to feel along the edges of the scar across his nose. “I can’t even imagine what my back looks like. Judging by your reaction, it must not be pretty.”

“No. It’s bad,” Keith admits, his gaze dropping to the brutal mess of lines carved across Shiro’s spine, the gouge in his shoulder, the wicked claw-marks left just below his ribs. “And I’d like to do worse to whoever’s responsible.”

That gets him a little snort and some laughter, weak as it is.

“I hate that they did this to you,” Keith huffs, his short-lived smile fading off as he runs his wet palm across uneven skin. It takes a long, slow exhale to relax the snarl that threatens to curl his lip. “But I’m glad you’re here and covered in scars, if the alternative is you being gone and dead.”

“Me too,” Shiro agrees, leaning back further in the tub and closing his eyes as he trusts himself to Keith’s care.

The rest of the bath is quiet, except for the occasional splash of water and the grainy stroke of Keith’s dagger across Shiro’s jaw as he shaves away coarse stubble. The prince dries off with Shabrang’s saddleblanket, wrapping the thick material around him like a cloak against the early morning chill. He then steps carefully into the worn pair of boots that Keith offers him, legs still dripping with water.

“How do they fit?” Keith asks as he drains the tub and sets about refilling it.

Shiro rocks back and forth on his heels, testing out the tough leather boots that belonged to Keith’s father more than a decade ago. They rise mid-calf to protect from snake bites, and the ugly, heavy hide could endure strenuous wear for years to come. “Close enough. Better than what I had.”

Keith’s brows lift, but he says nothing. The thin cloth boots Shiro had been wearing were clearly not made for rocky terrain, and the cuts and bruises across the soles of his sore feet are proof of that.

“You can head back in,” Keith says as he strips off his stained cotton shirt and begins unbuckling his belt. “Get a little more rest. It’ll just take me a few minutes to wash up.”

“You didn’t even warm it,” Shiro grouses, frowning down at the freshly pumped water as it sloshes away in the tin tub. “You’ll be cold.”

“It’ll be quick,” he replies as he kicks off his pants, trying not to smile at the prince’s pouty concern. Keith has no fondness for the cold— baths included, especially when the desert air is still brisk— but he sees no need to waste time or limited resources on heating bathwater for himself.

Shiro’s mouth twitches, somewhere between a smile and irritation at Keith’s brush-off. “At least let me help, then. Did you even shut your eyes last night? You must be exhausted.”

“It takes a lot to tire me out,” Keith deflects as he lowers himself into the tub, fighting the chatter that threatens to rattle his teeth. “You know that.”

Shiro’s laugh is short and small, but a victory Keith is pleased to have wrested out anyway. The prince crouches down and props his flesh and blood elbow on the rim of the tub before setting his chin in his palm, with a smile spread cheek to cheek. “I believe my retinue knows better. I think you once sparred with each of them in succession, bested them all, and afterward you still managed to throw me across the courtyard like I was a bag of flour.”

“I did it gently,” Keith reminds the prince, glancing at him from under dense, wet bangs that have grown unruly over his months in isolation.

“Gently,” Shiro echoes, chuckling good-naturedly. “ _Very_ gently, for you. I only rolled two or three times.”

Shiro reaches in to help clean Keith’s back and hair, working the soap across his skin and over his scalp with just his left hand. The right clutches at the rim of the tub, steely claws scraping over the rust-spotted tin.

And true to Keith’s word, it’s over quickly. He stands and squeezes his eyes shut as Shiro lifts a bucket above his head to give him one last, frigid rinse. At last he allows his teeth to knock and chatter as he yawns, and before Keith even opens his eyes he feels the sheltering warmth of fabric cast around him.

“Shiro,” Keith chides as he’s suddenly swallowed up in Shabrang’s blanket, with Shiro bare and naked and shivering in front of him.

“I’m already dry,” the prince counters, wrapping both arms around his middle in an effort to keep warm. He is adamant as he denies Keith’s repeated insistences to take the blanket back, that same willfulness that had so often vexed his tutors and handlers steeling Shiro against both cold and common sense.

And Keith knows it isn’t worth challenging him here and now, stubborn as he can be. He grips the blanket tighter around himself, fingers still numb from the bath. Inwardly, he’s grateful for the buffer between his wet skin and the desert morning chill. “Whatever, _Your Highness_. Let’s just get back inside.”

Keith follows Shiro up the steps and inside, eyes locked on the languid flex of muscle down the prince’s back and the movement of the scars that crisscross the expanse of once-smooth skin. He notes the thickened breadth of his powerful shoulders, bare and still slightly damp. It calls to mind workouts and sparring sessions spent under the summer sun, stripped down as they traded blows until they were too tired to do anything but lay beside each other on the banks of the palace’s garden pond. It makes Keith think of nights together in Shiro’s tent along the northern battlefronts, firelight glinting off of feverish skin as Keith cleaned his wounds and stitched them tight.

That indulgent reminiscence is why Keith nearly runs into Shiro’s back when the prince suddenly stops short only a few paces into the small house.

“Prince Takashi!” a tiny voice deeper within squeaks, followed by a rushed clatter of feet hitting the floorboards. “Y-you’re— you’re—”

A muddled chorus of stunned stammering follows, and Shiro balks at the three sets of eyes currently taking him in. He hunches forward, trying to conceal himself, and doesn’t even have a chance to open his mouth before Keith leans around his side to glare at the other three knights.

“Stop standing there and get him something to cover up with!”

Lance positions himself squarely in Keith’s view and gives him a dirty look. “Hey, _you’re_ the one wearing a blanket while His Highness is stuck in the nude!” he accuses, the inarguable truth of it turning Keith’s cheeks scarlet.

“I’ve got you, Your Highness,” Hunk interjects, meek as he approaches the naked prince with his yellow saddleblanket held up like an offering. He helps drape it around Shiro’s broad shoulders, nervously rambling all the while. “And… there we go. You, uh, look very regal, Your Highness.”

“Thank you,” Shiro says, shifting under the heavy, coarse material. His lips quirk to the side, very much aware that he cuts anything but a dignified figure like this. “This isn’t really how I planned on making introductions, but… I suppose you’re already familiar with me, at least in passing. Prince Takashi Shirogane. It’s my honor to meet the three of you.”

Shiro stretches his hand out to Lance first, a hesitant twitch in his fingers as the young man flinches at the sight of the dark, blood magic-imbued metal. His expression softens considerably when Lance steps forward and clasps his hand anyway.

“Except you,” the prince says, the first beginnings of a teasing smile in place as Lance’s eyes go wide. “We’ve met before, haven’t we?”

Lance’s relief bubbles out in a stuttered sigh, which then becomes a nervous laugh, which ends in stammering nonsense.

“Yes, Your Highness!” he manages, many long seconds later and still holding fast to Shiro’s hand. “Ser Lance Vela Rivera, at your service. You came to my family’s castle twice, once during summer and once during fall, and on your first visit you saw me practicing with a bow on the ramparts and you told me I was a good shot, so I devoted myself to archery and started listening to my arms master and I wanted to show you a few trick shots during your last visit, but everyone else was all over you, so I barely even got a word in edgewise, and Luis was stuck to your side like a _barnacle_ —”

“He is very talkative,” Shiro agrees, gaze flitting down to his hand, which would’ve been aching by this point if it weren’t made of metal and witchcraft.

“You have _no_ idea, Your Highness,” Lance continues to steamroll, now clasping the prince’s hand vise-tight between both of his own. “He never knows when to shut up, and neither do Marco or Veronica, for that matter. Anyway, your encouragement is why I became the best shot in my class, and all I’ve ever wanted is to put my skills to use in your service. You know what they called me back at the Garrison?”

“Loverboy Lance,” Pidge snickers, parroting back the self-imposed nickname that had gotten away from Lance all too quickly.

“ _The Tailor_ , because I can shoot through the eye of a needle,” Lance says through a grit smile, his stare cutting to Hunk and Pidge’s laughing faces with all the intensity of a summer typhoon.

He’s _still_ clasping Shiro’s hand. Keith can’t even look at anything else right now.

“I’m grateful for your assistance,” the prince says, genuine even as he slowly works his hand loose from Lance’s enthusiastic grip. Though it is far from flesh and blood, he still flexes his joints from the pressure. “And I’m sure I’ll see your skill with the bow in short time.”

Next is Hunk, drawn up to a height that matches the prince’s.

“Hunk Ma’a,” he introduces, bowing his head before taking Shiro’s offered hand. “It’s an honor, Your Highness.”

“Thank you for the blanket,” Shiro said, lifting one fringed, yellow corner appreciatively. “First you helped preserve my life, and now my modesty. You can’t imagine my gratitude.”

“Uh, of course, Prince Takashi. Oh!” Hunk exclaims, clapping his hands together before gesturing to a small spread arranged on the nearby table. “It’s not much, but I’ve put together a little something for your first meal since— uh, since you...”

The prince spares him further floundering with a smile and an affirmation. “Thank you, Ser Hunk. That sounds wonderful. I think I’ll try to get dressed first, though.”

“Great idea, Your Highness,” Hunk agrees with a skittish little laugh, his gaze dropping for a split second, taking in the ragged cover of the blanket and the dusty, weathered boots that peek out from under its hem.

Last is Pidge, diminutive beside the imposing figures of Hunk and Shiro.

“You also look familiar,” Shiro comments as he takes Pidge’s small hand in his own, his head tilting to the side as he squints down at the knight.

“We’ve met before, too, Your Highness,” Pidge says, “but it was only for a few minutes years ago. I’m Katie Holt, of the Holts of Silva. Sam Holt is my father. I’m Matt’s sister.”

Shiro and Lance both freeze at the reveal, but while the prince is briefly stunned into silence, Lance fills the air with immediate objections.

“Wait, wait, wait,” he says, waving outstretched arms. Without the padding of his armor, he’s even lankier than Keith initially took him for. “You’re _Pidge_. Pidge _Gunderson_.”

“No,” she says, emphatic as her brows lift high behind the burnished rims of oversized glasses. “That was a ruse so I could get into the Garrison without my mother knowing. Pidge is a nickname, and the Gundersons are a family of minor nobility I knew no one would inquire about.”

“But you— I didn’t realize— I _undressed_ in front of you, Pidge!” Lance almost screeches, his hands going to cover himself despite being fully clothed.

“I can assure you, Lance, I was not paying _it_ any mind.” Pidge sighs, giving up on Lance and directing her attention back to the prince. “My mother thinks I’m still attending university in the capital, but I had to— I _have_ to look for my father and brother, and I needed to know what the Garrison knew, and I needed to know how to protect myself out here, so I…”

Pidge’s words slow from a torrent to a crawl. Faint apprehension makes itself known in her nervous shuffle and the way her gaze never quite meets Shiro’s for long. “I know that I broke the law by entering the Garrison under false pretenses.”

“Oh, you broke several laws,” Shiro corrects with neither fire nor animosity. The web of archaic rules surrounding admission into old institutions like the Garrison is a sticky tangle that the prince has never been fond of, even before his drawn-out fight just to get Keith’s foot in the door of the elite knight academy.

Pidge’s gaze slides to the side, to where Keith stands. “I figured you would understand, Your Highness.”

“I do,” Shiro assures her. “I do, and I’m hardly going to judge or sentence you for it. But in good conscience, I have to object. Lady Colleen would— gods, I can’t even imagine the loss she’s endured already. Did you plan on crossing the Devil’s Divide alone, or with these two? Because it would be a death march either way.”

Pidge’s first clenches in sync with her delicate jaw. “I am _not_ going back home without Matt and my father. And my quest would be greatly expedited if you would tell me everything you can remember, Your Highness.”

Shiro isn’t used to people outside of his innermost circle snapping back with such intensity, and it shows in the little lean back onto his heels, the lift of his chin.

And though the moment is grim— and under other circumstances, Keith would be bristling at her attitude toward his prince— he has to smile. Pidge’s loss is too real. Her anger and defiance, all simmering in a form too small to contain it, is was raw and familiar, right down to the spread-stance and curled fists. She looks as ready to burst as Keith had felt at the Garrison in those first months after Shiro’s presumed death.

“You ought to listen to her,” Keith warns from the hall, voice carrying to Shiro’s ears. He tightens Shabrang’s blanket around himself as Shiro turns to look at him; the prince’s stare is heavy with troubled concern, his mouth settled into a flat line. “Or she might deck you like I did Iverson.”

There is a little twitch of surprise along Shiro’s brow, a slight part to his lips. His worried expression doesn’t vanish, but it does soften. When he turns back to Pidge— _Katie_ — he settles into some sort of acceptance.

“I’m sorry. I suppose I’m hardly in any position to keep you from running headlong into the Galra Empire,” he relents. “And I’ll do my best to recall what I can for you, but I’d be more at ease if you continued to travel in our company. No stealing away in the night by your lonesome.”

Pidge nods, hesitant at first but then assured. “Agreed. As long as you don’t try to stop me when I decide to go.”

Shiro’s shoulders sink an inch, but he inclines his head. Another concession he’s not pleased to make. Newly tired, he asks, “How far along were the three of you at the Garrison?”

“Second year,” Pidge answers, all bright satisfaction now that the prince has given in and her position is more or less secured. “You can count on us, Your Highness. We can take care of ourselves— and you, too.”

Shiro’s smile is thin. “I don’t doubt your commitment or heart,” he says, after a stilted silence. He casts a look back at Keith— it’s one his knight recognizes from parties and unexpected encounters with flattering nobles and merchants, all social exhaustion and desperation to be saved.

“Let’s get you dressed, Shiro,” Keith says quickly, beckoning him down the hall and into the relative privacy of his father’s old room.

The clothes from the line are still a little damp, but they’ll do. The old shirt and breeches came from a chest of his father’s, and both at least seem a close fit for Shiro. Leagues better than the tattered garb the Galra put him in, at least.

“They’re awfully green, aren’t they?” Shiro murmurs as Keith helps slip the shirt onto his arms and over his shoulders. “I wonder if any of them have even seen combat outside of the training ring.”

“They stood to defend you when I took you from Iverson,” Keith answers, for what it’s worth. He notes how the breeches are a little loose around Shiro’s trim waist and makes a mental note to find a belt somewhere. “And against Garrison soldiers, no less.”

Shiro hums at that, unconvinced. His focus is aimed down, brows furrowed deep; he has trouble managing the row of small buttons with the claw-tipped fingers of his right hand.

“Let me,” Keith says as he steps forward and gently takes the front of the shirt. He starts from the bottom, his fingers nimble as he works the remaining buttons through frayed holes. He keeps his eyes on his hands and the worn fabric, but the latticework of scars down Shiro’s front catches his eye every other second.

“One light skirmish is hardly preparation for facing down the Galra,” Shiro says, a heavy sigh stirring Keith’s hair.

The knight lifts his gaze to find Shiro’s head turned aside, his brows scrunched tight above a distant, worried stare. “And you think they’re marching here? Now?”

Shiro’s eyes slip shut as he nods, his whole body wavering at the thought. As Keith finishes buttoning up his shirt, the fabric at last obscuring a particularly nasty scar across the prince’s breastbone, the prince swallows and says, “I think I need some fresh air.”

“Don’t stray too far,” Keith warns even as he steps aside for Shiro leave. The sound of his boots down the porch steps makes Keith want to follow, to keep vigil in case one of the many threats that trail after his prince rears its head, but Shiro is likely overdue for some much-needed solitude to settle his thoughts.

To distract himself, Keith drifts to the common room, hoping for a bite of Hunk’s promised breakfast. He figures he can grab extra to take to Shiro, too, once he’s had enough time to clear his head.

Lance sits in a chair by the hearth, half-draped over its backing, his cheeks still rosy and his eyes dreamily distant. “I can’t believe I saw _the_ Prince Takashi,” he murmurs, already sounding wistful. “ _All_ of him. So close, I could’ve reached out and—”

“Careful,” Keith cuts in, all flat tones. His teeth click behind pursed lips, and his crossed arms flex as he curls his fingers.

Lance bends forward, steepling his hands in front of his face, and closes his eyes. After inhaling deeply through his nose, he exhales a prayer. He’s all false, exaggerated piety as he adds, “Praise the gods, for they _do_ know how to lift the spirits of the weary. I’m ready to march a hundred miles in the prince’s name!”

“More like ready to _whine_ for a hundred miles,” Hunk mutters as he laces his boots, swapping knowing grins with Pidge.

She finishes packing her bag, kneeling there on the floor of Keith’s home, and glances up at Keith with thoughtful concern. “He didn’t have all those scars before, did he?”

“No,” Keith tells them, his voice suddenly hoarse. He glances out the window, over the bare, low-sloped hills, and knows Shiro wanders somewhere near. “Not even half. Not even… there were only a handful worth noting before. Everything else is fresh.”

She looks crestfallen, and Keith knows that every horror inflicted on Shiro must be amplified in her mind, built-upon as she no doubt imagines even worse befalling her father and brother. He doesn’t know what to say, given that it’s a real and undeniable possibility. “So, uh… Pidge or Katie?” he asks instead. “From now on.”

She takes a moment to think on it. “Either works for me. But I think… I think I’d rather go by Pidge, for now. Just don’t start treating me any differently, okay? I’m only a couple of years younger than the rest of you.”

“Noted. Even though you’re about as tall as my eight-year-old niece,” Lance teases, smirking as Pidge’s face scrunches tight in irritation. His good humor slips away soon after, blue eyes turning sharp as eyes as he suddenly zeroes in on Keith. “Wait… where is Prince Takashi?”

Keith is quiet for a moment, chewing on his words. Everything with Lance feels like treading dangerously; he’d rather navigate a scorpion den than deal with snippy words and accusations. “He needed a moment alone.”

“Alone?” Lance asks, his chair rocking onto just two legs as he leans forward. “You let him go out there unprotected?”

“He can protect himself,” Keith rebuts, though Lance’s concerns echo in the back of his mind. “And he has a lot on his mind. He needs some time and peace to plan our next step.”

“I can advise him on that,” Lance says, brimming with eagerness. “ _Easy_. We ride to the Varaderian Coast and inform everyone that Prince Takashi still lives. The people flock to support him, he leads us to victory, and once he’s back on the throne, we march on the Galra Empire to make them pay. And get your family back, Pidge,” he adds.

Pidge’s mouth quirks in a brief smile with no true joy. “Doubtful. And anyway, I don’t plan on sticking around for the duration of a war while my father and brother are captive. If everything goes according to plan, I could have them back home before His Highness is even coronated.”

In between bites of the dried duck and bread Hunk had set out for breakfast, Keith snorts. “I wouldn’t count on those plans. You’re better off staying by Shiro’s side until he consolidates power and has an army to send with you. It’s your sworn duty to the crown, anyway,” he reminds her as he uses his thumbnail to dig at a string of meat caught between his teeth. “But it’s just like nobility to only keep promises when it’s convenient.”

Pidge’s expression hardens, lips pressing to a thin line. “I thought you agreed with me.”

“Understanding doesn’t mean I think it’s a good decision. In your position, I’d—” Keith comes up short. He’d be gone already, caution to the wind, riding alone into the abyss in search of Shiro, if he only knew where to look. “I’d be just as tempted. But it won’t do your family any good to have you die to some monster in the Devil’s Divide.”

For a long moment, the only sound is of Keith’s chewing on tough meat.

Pidge shuts her large, golden eyes tight, mouth twisting for a moment. And then she is some measure of focused again— angry, but focused. “Do you really think Prince Takashi would mount a campaign against the Galra afterward? If they really did all of that to him…”

They might have no choice in the matter, Keith wants to say. Shiro seems to think war will find their doorstep, that the Galra behemoth has been riled out of sleepy legend and stands ready to consume Arus. But Keith is slower to choose and form his words than Lance.

“Of course he will,” Lance says, a hard look settling over his features. Confidence layered over incredulity, only just barely masking his personal insult at the suggestion Shiro would do anything less. “This is Prince Takashi Shirogane we’re talking about. The Lion of Arus? The _Undefeated_? He’s going to lead us to victory, just like he did up north. Like he’s led every army in his command. He’s never lost a battle!”

“He lost that day in the borderlands, when the Galra took him,” Hunk corrects, the reminder weighing grim and heavy in the air.

The truth of it forces Lance to work his jaw in displeasure, his frown pronounced. “Whatever,” he says, dismissive as he rises in one fluid motion and stalks off through the doorway by the hearth, outside to the pitted area where Keith and his father had once grilled skewered meat under the stars.

Pidge sighs, pushes herself to her feet, and goes out after him, yelling something about scorpion nests.

“I didn’t mean it badly,” Hunk says to Keith, his broad fingers tapping together in a worried gesture. “Just…”

“I get it,” Keith says. He crouches down on his heels beside Hunk, watching him organize and pack the last of his belongings. Hunk’s well-prepared, Keith notices, though he doubts the rations and medicine will stretch long for a party of five. “Shiro’s just as human as anyone else, and this has— it’s been hard on him. He’s barely had a moment to catch his breath.”

“Yeah,” Hunk agrees as he cinches his pack tight. When he looks at Keith, it’s without his usual furtive glancing and almost permanently worried expression. It’s a little more direct, a little more open to the idea that Keith might be more than an up-jumped cutthroat. “Y’know, it did surprise me... His Highness is actually very human, up close.”

“Almost entirely,” Keith adds dryly, a smile cracking his lips. “I hear he comes from a long line of humans, in fact.”

“You know what I mean,” Hunk scoffs, almost elbowing Keith’s side before stopping just short, apparently thinking twice about how it might be taken. “He’s… relaxed. Around you, at least.” A moment of hesitation.“People talked about you at the Garrison, you know.”

“Yeah, I picked up on that.” There were only so many times that whispers could fall silent upon his arrival and resume as he left before it clicked. His stint at the Garrison had mostly been lonely, barring occasional visits from Shiro as he made his rounds of the kingdom.

Hunk’s wide shoulders lift in a shrug. “But it turns out you’re not half bad. Intimidating, for sure, and I still don’t really get how you and His Highness are so close, but other than that—”

“Why do you say I’m intimidating?” Keith doesn’t look at him as he asks, but it’s a question that’s dogged him even since the palace. Only Shiro seems to have ever looked at him and seen something in need of championing, someone vulnerable despite his hard look and skills with a blade.

Hunk faces him with a flat, nonplussed look. He ticks a list off on his fingers, one by one. “Wastelander with no last name. Part of the royal court. You _clearly_ have the ear of the prince. You walk around in blood-stained leathers. And according to Jenny Starweather’s cousin’s apothecary, you slew an assassin for the royal family. Oh, and I saw you send James Griffin _through a wall_ during our very first sparring session.”

Keith shrugs and spares a glance at the pale, sun-bleached leather of his jacket. Or, rather, it’s pale where it isn’t dark with sunken-in blood. “That wall was pretty much just plaster anyway. As for my clothes, these stains won’t come out but it still fits, so it seems like it would be a waste to throw away. Besides, it’s comfortable.”

“See, I feel like the assassin part is what should’ve caught your ear,” Hunk says, head cocked so that his bangs flop to one side across his forehead. “Unless… you really did that.”

Keith nods. More than once, actually, but he figures Hunk doesn’t need to know that if the notion of cornering would-be assassins is so intimidating.

A small, high-pitched noise comes out of Hunk before he turns back to the fire. “You know what? Okay. That actually completely checks out,” he decides, waving a finger as he walks through that little revelation, “and it also helps explain you and Prince Takashi being so, uh, _familiar_.”

It’s another hang up that Keith doesn’t have time to puzzle through. Shiro is his friend— first and only, closer to him than any other living soul— and Keith can think of no other way to be around the man who spared his life and then did his best to lay the world at Keith’s feet.

“Oh, and I _do_ have a surname,” Keith adds before heading outside to find Shiro, grabbing a handful of food for him along the way.

Dawn breaks slow across the wide plains, pale sunlight spilling down the sides of ravines and softening the foreboding red of the earth. The dirt rises around his boots with every step, coating the scuffed toes in a fresh layer of dusty earth.

Shiro stands some distance away from the shack, atop a tiny hill, lost in the pink and gold skies that herald the rising sun. His stare is far away, as if he’s there once more— whatever place he was held captive for over a year as his closest blood relative passed on, his kingdom fell sideways, and his chosen knight vanished into lonely obscurity.

Keith wonders if the prince even notices his presence. If Shiro is so mired in his thoughts that he doesn’t feel Keith’s hand upon his shoulder, his fingers gentle as they smooth down the wrinkled, thread-bare muslin of his father’s old shirt and light vest.

But after a few moments more, Shiro turns and gives Keith a soft, fragile smile. “It’s beautiful,” he murmurs. “Thought I’d die before I got to see an Arusian dawn again.”

Keith’s grip on Shiro tightens, his bare fingers pressing into the swell of Shiro’s shoulder. His thumb brushes back and forth over the fabric that covers skin mottled with scars.

Scars Keith now knows intimately. An elaborate, sickening sprawl of them. Cuts and slices and the raised lines of whip-marks; healed over burns that left behind skin gone tight and shiny; arcs where strong jaws had clasped around him; stab wounds sealed with puckered scar tissue. The worst of it rings Shiro’s upper arm, where the Galra replacement is fused to his flesh. The scar tissue is rough and ridged, as if reopened and healed a dozen or more times.

Keith’s own skin crawls in sympathy. It leaves his veins singing and his chest aching with a rage that can’t be sated— not here or now, and maybe not ever. The grind of his teeth resonates low in his inner ear, the force enough to send pain lancing through his jaw.

“Keith.”

The name pulls Keith back to the present. He blinks and finds Shiro leaning down and in, heavy lashes framing his concerned gaze. The scar across the bridge of his nose seems even worse now— a deliberate defacement on a portion of his body otherwise left untouched.

“Are you well?” Shiro asks, touching the backs of his knuckles against Keith’s forehead and each of his temples in turn. “Let the record show that I objected to that cold bath.”

“I’m fine,” Keith snorts, catching Shiro’s arm by the wrist and tugging it away. “You don’t need to worry about me, Shiro. It’s supposed to be the other way around.”

“I have a responsibility to you,” Shiro says, almost stern. He doesn’t fight Keith’s easy grip, content to let his wrist be held. “I’m the reason you’re here in these circumstances, after all.”

“Don’t say it like it’s a hardship,” Keith tells him, warning in his tone. He slides his hand back up Shiro’s arm, finding a point between his elbow and below his shoulder to squeeze. “I’d rather be here by your side than anywhere else in the world.”

Keith lives for the way Shiro’s lashes look when he closes his eyes, dark against the hint of color sitting high on his cheeks.

“We should head out soon,” Keith continues, rolling his shoulders and rising up on his toes to stretch his legs. It would be another long day of riding, and it’s more paramount than ever that he be in peak condition to fight for Shiro. “Is there a place you have in mind? A stronghold? We could head north. Shuksan and Thunder Basin would stand and fight for you.”

“I’m sure,” Shiro agrees, nodding to himself. Distraction hangs over his expression like the gauzy touch of a burial shroud— it’s far from the quiet focus he wore back at the palace.

“Lance wants to head to the coast,” Keith says, hoping it might prompt more of a response. “Muster your forces there. Your generals might remember their oaths and step down when you make your bid for the throne, but I’d feel better asking for their sworn fealty with an army at our backs.”

It does get him a response, but it’s not one Keith was prepared for. “I… don’t know that I should, Keith.”

Keith swivels his head toward Shiro. “Don’t know that you should… what? Our two best options are Shuksan and— as much as it pains me to say it— the Varaderian Coast. Weak-willed nobles might waver, but the people love you. Common soldiers will support your claim—”

“It’s the suitability of my claim that I’m questioning.”

It dumbs Keith’s swirling concerns into momentary stillness. There is no question to be had, there. Shiro’s claim is stronger than any other living member of the Shirogane clan; he’s meant to rule and would do so nobly, and Keith would stake his life on that truth. Shiro would cultivate so much _good_ as king, where others have sown war and let poverty fester.

Keith switches to a different track, hoping to kindle some of Shiro’s old confidence, his heavy sense of responsibility. His fingers dig into Shiro’s shoulder as Keith pulls him closer, desperate to wake him from whatever nightmare has clouded his thoughts. “You’re the crown prince, Shiro. It’s your _duty_ to rule, and no one else in Arus is a better fit for that throne.”

“I no longer believe that to be true,” Shiro says, and each word seems to tax him terribly.

Keith’s eyebrows shoot skyward. “What? You used to—”

Talk incessantly of plans for his rule, propelled by a frantic urge to accomplish as much as he could in whatever time he was granted: overhauls to the tax system; the new university he wanted to fund; initiatives to broaden access to education; his intent to strip most class-based distinctions from the law and add new ones to protect the least advantaged. He’d already created ripples of change when he leveraged his position to send Keith, a young man of common blood and no reputable name, to the Garrison. He’d been the one to push Keith to aspire for more— an education, a knighthood, a role at the king’s side— and had dreamed as high as the stars for himself, too.

Shiro’s jaw is tight and his whole body rigid, down to the uncomfortable-looking spread of his clawed fingers. “Arus can’t afford to be in the midst of a civil war when the Galra come knocking—”

“All the more reason for us to act quickly,” Keith counters. He tries to tally the houses along the Varaderian Coast, which Shiroganes in the Vale of Narahir would support Shiro’s claim over advancing their own, how many northern villages and estates Shiro had personally defended. “We could have you back on the throne in as little as a season. Maybe less, even.”

“Only if we were lucky, and I’m not feeling much favored by the gods lately,” Shiro says, dry as the winds that curl around them, tugging at their clothes and hair. “And it’s more than that, even. It’s _me_ , Keith.”

“Yes, it’s you,” Keith says, gripping onto it like a lifeline, following that thought like it’s a beacon in the dark. “ _You_. People will rally behind you, Shiro. You can lead us against the Galra when they come.”

“I don’t know what they did to me,” Shiro says quietly, as if Keith’s words were carried away by the wind before he even heard them. Keith can’t tell whether the claw-tipped fingers are twitching of their own accord or by Shiro’s intent. “If I can’t answer for that to myself, what will I tell my people? My court?”

“Shiro…”

“When they ask where I disappeared to for a year, and I can’t remember? When I can’t account for my escape or my return?” His right hand curls into a tight fist, and the cords of darkness that slither under the metal seem to bulge. “When they see this arm and call me cursed and tainted, how will I argue? If I take the throne while corrupted, how much destruction could _I_ bring?”

At a loss for what to say again, Keith tries to touch Shiro, to reassure and comfort in the best way he knows, but the prince flinches away like he’s avoiding the hiss of a near arrow.

“I don’t think I’m the same man I was before, Keith,” he tells the knight, and his voice is riddled with wavering cracks. Sweat beads along his brow when he looks down at that arm, woven of materials and magics they can’t even properly name. “And I’m not sure I can go back to how I was.”

“Don’t say that,” Keith protests, rallying hard against the worry that crawls in his belly. The deep magenta aura of the runes ringing Shiro’s arm disquiet him; the air of magic surrounding it is ominous and palpable. Worse than that, though, is how much pain it carries for Shiro— how much loss and doubt and fear.

Slow, careful, he touches his palm to Shiro’s left arm, settling on the broad swell of his shoulder. It’s a relief when Shiro doesn’t again shy away, but Keith wishes he could do more; more than offer his concern, more than simply soothe the ragged pieces of Shiro long after the damage has been done. Keith barely knows if his fury, currently caged behind his flimsy ribs, will be enough to avenge his prince. But for the man who made himself vulnerable for Keith, who trusted him when no one else would, he can _try_.

Shiro is larger than Keith remembers him, built up by scarring and muscle hard-won over a year in Galra captivity. He stands less at ease in his own skin. He is stiffer under Keith’s touch, as if there’s always a sliver of a second where he still expects pain.

So Keith embraces him slow, by degrees at a time.

Before Shiro, such touches had been foreign to Keith— it had been years since his father held him, and memory of his mother had come only from stories. He’s spent more of his life alone than surrounded by loved ones, and it still shows in the lingering awkwardness of his limbs as he pulls Shiro close, tucking the taller man’s head into the crook of his shoulder.

Shiro’s arms eventually knot around his waist, the prince curling in on him even as he squeezes Keith closer. It calms them both. Keith had forgotten how good it felt to be held like this.

“You’re still you, you know,” he murmurs, his lips nearly brushing Shiro’s ear. He keeps one arm snug around the prince’s back, while his other hand skirts up to stroke through his hair. “You’re still my prince, Shiro.”

Shiro’s considerable weight sags against him. “I missed you, Keith.”

Keith closes his eyes and focuses on the feel of Shiro safe in his arms, the smell of his clean skin under desert and dusty cotton. “I wish I had been there for you that day.”

“I’m grateful you weren’t.” And Keith can feel his wince.

Keith misses the lost warmth when Shiro eventually straightens up and pulls back a hair, even though they’re still tangled close. Shiro’s face is soft with wonder as he looks on Keith, dark eyes searching for something. “How did you find me, Keith?”

And it’s the combination of that expression and the memory of a year’s worth of loneliness and struggle that makes Keith break at last, spilling out closely held truth out for Shiro to hear.

He tells Shiro how the news had broken in the Garrison dining hall, in the middle of supper. How they’d said that a wild beast had crawled from the shadows of the empire and through the Devil’s Divide to slay the prince and his company down to a man, rending them apart or devouring them whole. How Keith had barely managed to stand and stagger to his room in the ensuing chaos— sick with grief, his vision swimming like a solid jar to the head from one of the arms instructors, breaths as shallow as the slice of a rapier.

It was only later that Keith learned there had been no body to recover, as an empty tomb made for the prince was sealed with only his sword inside. And it was that tiny shred of possibility that Keith had clung to as the weeks clawed away at him, as the queen followed her son into death and generals from the Garrison and beyond banded together to seize the throne before a lesser Shirogane could.

The last straw had been Shabrang. Keith wasn’t one to believe in signs or portents— before his sojourn in the desert, at least— but the sight of Shiro’s noble horse being led into the Garrison stables had shaken him like the touch of the gods themselves. For a beautiful, terrible moment, he had searched for Shiro astride the mount’s bare back, so used to tracing his prince’s armored silhouette from the windows of the tower where knight-cadets lodged. Shabrang was sleek and sullen in the firelight, and missing his rider, and the flicker of hope that Keith had briefly felt left his chest caved in disappointment when it vanished.

Keith had known, then, that neither of them belonged within Garrison walls. Outpost soldiers had found Shabrang wandering in the wastes, roaming loose for months before anyone could capture him. No doubt some pompous knight-commander had it in their head to usurp the prince’s renowned steed, too.

In an act of great faith and little forethought, Keith had stolen into the stables to make his escape that very night. And Shabrang, notoriously strong-willed and almost viciously loyal to Shiro, had heard his desperate pleas and allowed Keith to clamber astride him. Maybe Shabrang had sensed that Keith was seeking Shiro too, however impossible the quest might be; maybe he’d just accepted that Keith was the closest thing left to Shiro.

The first weeks after their flight from the Garrison were a blur of strong purpose and heady hope. Keith had set out determined to recover Arus’ missing prince, to succeed where entire cohorts of soldiers had failed. He’d chased any lead he thought might ease the deepening ache in his heart.

The disillusionment had taken months of fruitless searching to set in, leaving Keith bereft as he tried to imagine his place in this world without either family or friend. He’d wandered aimless, at times driven only by the need to care for Shabrang like Shiro would’ve wanted, until the first night that he felt that distant, interior call as he lay under the chasm of the night sky strung with stars named for so many Shirogane kings and queens, but not his Shiro.

“A call?” Shiro asks in the here and now, puzzled concern written into the seam between his brows.

Keith draws in a hitched and hesitant breath. He knows it sounds half-crazed, like maybe a small part of him went mad from the loss of Shiro or the heat or some brutal combination of the two.

“A feeling.” It had come as a whisper at first, so distant he could mistake it for the wind. Then it was a wordless voice that settled around him, under his skin, deep into his head. And then it was more a feeling than a sound— a pull toward a destination he couldn’t picture but longed for all the same, like a path so familiar you walk it without even meaning to. “A pull toward… something.”

Following the whispered call had led Keith to places he neither recognized nor understood: carven caves and ruined slabs of stone, etched in glyphs and pictographs; dry riverbeds with metal seals buried under their cracked earth; the half-buried pillars of ancient Altea, ringed in the dead language of a dead people.

It had led him to Shiro.

“I heard it while I was searching for you,” Keith says, unable to mend the crack in his voice. “And I followed because I had nothing and no one else, but... it led me to the very place you would be, Shiro. The one place in the whole world that I’d find you.”

Something in Shiro’s eyes softens. “Keith…”

“I can’t think of it as coincidence,” Keith murmurs after, his head shaking the barest bit. He can’t fathom how else it could be— that somehow, across this earth and under these stars, Shiro had been delivered to him once again.

Shiro’s smile is warm and touched with amusement. “What happened to the skeptic I knew? I thought you didn’t take the gods for meddlers.”

Keith shrugs. “Maybe they aren’t,” he hedges. He doesn’t have answers or truths, except for what he feels within his own heart. “But _something_ is responsible.”

Shiro dwells heavily on that thought, sending a needling worry through Keith’s heart. His silence is drawn, contemplative.

“Do you think I’m crazy?” Keith’s heartbeat is high in his throat, quick with anxious anticipation.

The prince startles, then jumps to comfort him. “No, Keith. Of course not,” he assures, his hand settling on Keith’s shoulder, warm even through the layers of Keith’s leathers. “You know how much I trust your judgment.”

“As I trust you to lead.” He lifts his brows in expectation. Maybe Shiro’s in a better place already; maybe his spell of self-doubt is passed, or at least held at bay. “So… where will you be leading us, _Your Highness_?”

“Stop that,” Shiro huffs, poking his knuckle into the ticklish spot along Keith’s ribs as they double back toward the shack. “I have a thought in mind, but it would be unfair to foist it on our companions without fair warning.”

Once back in his childhood home, Keith dutifully stands by Shiro’s side as he addresses the three Garrison knights.

“Prince Takashi,” Lance is the first to greet, quickly pulling himself onto his feet. His chest puffs when Shiro’s gaze falls on him. “How can we serve you?”

“We help him retake the throne,” Keith cuts in from Shiro’s flank, settling his weight in his heels as he hopes for Shiro to agree.

“Keith,” the prince says in warning, his metal hand held up to beg his silence. He clears his throat before speaking again. “I don’t intend to make a run at the throne. Not now, certainly.”

Lance rises against the very idea instantly, his eyes bright with zeal and his cheeks more than a touch red. “The Vela Rivera family is loyal to the ruling branch of the Shirogane clan— o-or they will be, once they know there’s still a royal Shirogane to rally behind. My family will stand with you, Prince Takashi. I _swear_ it. The whole of the Varaderian Coast will. We would be honored to host you again.”

Hunk makes a similar, less zealous profession, offering the relative protection of the distant Stone Isles; Pidge is silent, her reluctance to return north to her home in Silva precluding any offer of Holt hospitality.

“I appreciate your generous offers. Deeply. But I cannot ask it of you or the kingdom, given my… current state.”

“You don’t have to ask us,” Keith says, his eyes narrowing under resolutely lowered brows. “Everyone in this room took an oath to serve you—”

“Well, the royal throne and the clan of Shirogane,” Hunk leaps in to correct.

Keith’s lips draw thin at the distinction; while technically correct, he hates it. “Maybe at the Garrison. But I swore my oath well before then and it was to the man in front of me. To a man worthy of it, and worthy of ruling. Shiro, I would cut a swathe through any army to seat you on that throne—”

“I know, Keith,” Shiro says, resting his good hand on Keith’s shoulder in an effort to calm his riled emotions. “It’s not your loyalty or your ability I doubt. It’s myself, and what is best for the kingdom here and now.”

“Then what would you have us do?” Pidge asks. She still reads half-wary, as if on guard for any course that might hinder her progress toward her family.

Shiro’s smile is warm but careworn at the edges. “I would have you make your own choices, as I have made mine. I warned the Garrison of the Galra as well as I could, but if you would also send word to your families somehow, I would rest easier. For my own part, I… I need answers.”

Keith stiffens as a trickle of magenta light flickers through Shiro’s metal arm. He isn’t alone in the unsettled reaction.

“I can’t trust myself to lead— much less rule an entire kingdom— while I carry this curse. Corruption. Whatever it is,” he mutters, thoughtful as he clicks wicked metal talons together. “I intend to travel with Keith wherever his road leads, in the hopes that I will find my own answers along the way.”

Keith’s eyebrows shoot high. Elation at the thought of traveling together again is undercut by his deep-seated sense that something is amiss if Shiro isn’t leading Arus. “You’re really abandoning the throne?”

“Leaving it in better hands,” Shiro counters as he slowly curls the metal fingers of his right hand, watching the joints move. There is an eeriness to their animation, a sinister air to the faint, pink-tinged light that sometimes slips through the teeming darkness that knits the metal together. “Until I’m confident in my own again.”

It’s worry that prompts Keith to push it. “If we wait, Shiro, there might never be another opportunity. You could be in exile forever.”

“Your Highness,” Lance interjects, his disappointment plain, “you’re the Lion of Arus. A legend. I’ve never wanted anything more than the opportunity to prove myself to you. We can search for answers at my family’s castle. We can return you to the throne and then use the palace’s resources to search for a cure.”

For once, Keith finds he agrees with Lance. It’s... unpleasant. Rarely do he and Shiro ever disagree, much less on something fundamental. If there was an ever-constant on the horizon that Keith had never even thought to doubt, it was this: that Shiro would one day rule, and with Keith beside him until his reign ended.

That dream had been fractured and delayed, but a glimmer of its old splendor had returned with Shiro— only to again unwind before Keith’s very eyes.

“Then where do we go, exactly?” he asks, re-aligning himself to Shiro’s new purpose. He’s the rightful prince— and Keith will never let him forget it— but this cause is important, too.

The corner of Shiro’s mouth moves just a hair. Relief, in some small part. His stare lingers on Keith before moving to the others. “In the last months, Keith has been following a call from beyond. A sort of… guiding voice. It led him here, and to me… and I think I’d like to follow it with him.”

In the background, Lance groans and throws his arms into the air.

Shiro is somehow grim and fond all at once. His words ring with finality despite the quiet shock that runs through the room. “Lance, Hunk, if you choose to return to your families, I’d understand. It’d be just as well if you did. And Pidge,” he sighs, “I know where your heart’s set.”

She nods, short and brusque. “I’ll stick with you and Keith for a little bit,” she concedes, giving him a quick half-smile.

“And why exactly is Keith’s random _feeling_ worth following?” Lance snaps, his arms crossing tight over his chest. After a beat, he pales and hurries to add, “U-um, Your Highness.”

Keith starts when Shiro’s attention returns to him, bright-eyed and expectant. The prince cocks his head the barest bit, and Keith pulls in a quick breath as he realizes Shiro wants him to explain.

So he pulls out his journal and the well-worn map from his breast-pocket and swallows down his harried nerves. Keith’s formal education didn’t begin until Shiro found him, and he prays to whatever god might be watching that he doesn’t embarrass himself in a room full of well-learned nobles. “It’s not random. Here, I’ve been trying to determine exactly where it’s coming from,” Keith says as he lays out his journal and unfolds the battered map he’d stolen from the Garrison.

“Without much luck, by the looks of it,” Lance mutters. Still, he peers down with interest, quiet as he makes sense of Keith’s less-than-practiced handwriting.

“It was leading me southwest, through places where the Alteans left their mark,” Keith explains as he traces a nail along the dots marked on the map. He marked off places he’d searched without success and circled a few others that felt promising, their spread forming a sparse path that weaves through the Ariz Wastes.

“Uh, I know this place,” Hunk says out of nowhere. He leans in between Keith and Lance and taps a thick finger at a spot directly adjacent to a point Keith had circled. “This whole area was an Altean research complex. There ought to be ruins around there somewhere.”

“Altean ruins? _There_?” Pidge asks, thin brows raised in a show of disbelief. “How could you possibly know that?”

“It was mentioned in this massive, ancient journal my tutor made me copy. It was my punishment for writing a limerick about how big his butt was,” Hunk says, pulling a face at the memory. “My hand cramped for weeks afterward. Anyway, it mentioned this area used to house a sort of… study for the Altean royal family. A sanctuary, maybe?”

“Surely someone would’ve noticed a royal Altean complex,” Pidge says skeptically, “in the course of ten millennia.”

Hunk shrugs. “All I’m saying is that Keith’s… _feeling_ might be explained by some lingering Altean magic, if he’s sensitive to that sort of thing.” He glances at Keith, pointed in his concern. “Which would make pursuing it highly dangerous and inadvisable.”

Keith’s spine straightens at the warning, but he’s more absorbed in the notion that it could be old magic drawing him along, filling his thoughts with ideas of destiny. But it’s more than the raw forces of nature, Keith knows— he grew up here in the Ariz Wastes, knows the territory like the back of Shiro’s hand, and he’s never before felt this awakened energy.

“It could also contain secrets that might help Prince Takashi,” Pidge says, voice low as her fingers thoughtfully strum against her hip. “The Alteans mastered healing magics unlike anything we know today. They were also known for their means of breaking curses. If there’s a possibility of recovering the prince’s memory or dealing with his arm…”

Lance straightens up, too. “Then we ought to go! Hunk?”

“So, we’re all just ignoring what I said about the dangers of loose Altean magic, I guess?” Hunk asks, wilting slightly. He sighs at Lance’s gentle prodding and taps his fist to his chest, resigned. “Much as I’d love to go home, my place is at Lance’s side and yours, Prince Takashi.”

“I’m grateful to hear it,” Shiro says, soft as he takes in the four of them. “When can we be ready to ride?”

“An hour. Two, tops,” Lance supplies, shrugging. “Pidge, Hunk, get the horses so we can water them and refill our skins. I’m going to do a quick perimeter check and I’ll be back to help saddle up.”

As the others leave to make ready, Shiro leans in toward Keith, head tilted curiously.

Keith’s journal is still open for Shiro to see, splayed wide in Keith’s hands. It reveals more than just a log of his journey— the leather-bound book holds his spare thoughts, his bitter longing, and his reminiscing, too. All are scratched in around the margins of more diligent notes, fitted wherever the paper had space. He doubts Shiro can read his uneven and inconsistent lettering at a glance, but still.

The prince’s finger drags lightly over the handwritten page, following Keith’s detailed notes and sketches of a site he had come across back near the Arusian heartlands. He turns the page, and then another, skimming slowly through the span of Keith’s collected travels.

“And you found all of this because of a… a calling? A voice?” There’s puzzled awe in his words.

“A feeling,” Keith replies, nodding along. It’s many things, actually, and none of them simple to describe.

Shiro traces along a line of sloppy writing at the bottom of a page. He read the words slow, unwitting as his voice turns the blood in Keith’s veins to ice floes. “ _‘It’s killing me when you’re away’_...?”

Keith snaps the journal shut, very nearly clipping the prince’s extended finger. He takes in a deep breath through his nose, mouth screwed up while he attempts to salvage words that will soften how exposed he feels.

“Well. It _was_ ,” is all Keith can say in his defense, shoving his journal back into its pocket and leading Shiro out the front door to find the others.

The heat along his neck and cheeks is outdone by the rising sun. “Let me get Shabrang,” he tells Shiro before letting out a whistle. Belatedly, he realizes that the prince is more than capable of summoning his own mount— and maybe would’ve liked to, after so long without him.

They hear the horse long before they see him, thundering back from a grazing spot well distant from where the other horses are tethered. At the sight of someone beside Keith, Shabrang draws up short on instinct.

But it doesn’t dissuade Shiro, who strides toward the massive, midnight black stallion with his arms outstretched, as if ready to hug.

Other than a hesitant sniff at his new right arm, Shabrang greets Shiro as warmly as ever, whinnying and stamping his wide hooves in excitement. He bows his head as Shiro palms up the strong cords of his neck, lipping and snuffling interestedly at his old master’s borrowed clothes.

Shiro grins as he runs his hand across Shabrang’s withers. “Keith… I can’t thank you enough for taking care of Shabrang. I was so worried about him.”

Keith grunts as he grabs the nearby saddle and slowly approaches the prince and his beloved warhorse. He throws the faded black blanket over the horse’s back first, and then sets about readying him for the ride. “A lot of knight-officers at the Garrison wanted him, you know. But there’s only one rider good enough for Shabrang.”

“Two, apparently,” Shiro corrects. He mulls that over for a moment. “We’ll definitely need to find you a horse of your own soon. In the meantime, Shabrang can seat us both.”

Shiro mounts up smooth and practiced, almost giddy as he sits atop his favorite horse for the first time in well over a year.

“I have one in mind, actually,” Keith says as he waits for Shiro to slip his foot free of the stirrup and slide forward in the saddle. His knee is practically against his chest as he fits his boot into the empty stirrup, careful of knocking against his prince’s leg, and heaves himself up to mount the eighteen-hand horse. Keith swings his free leg across Shabrang’s girth and settles comfortably behind Shiro, his arms going right around the man’s middle.

“Really?” the prince turns his head, whitened forelock catching in the breeze.

Keith grins as he feels something like certainty take root behind his ribs. “If we have any time left to spare.”

Shiro rides first to tell the others where they’re headed and what they hope to do. The idea isn’t much-loved— they’ve spent too much time in one place already, and splitting up even for an hour is risky— but bearing two riders for any considerable length of time is a lot to ask of even Shabrang. No one can deny that it would be best if Keith could locate a mount of his own.

They set off in a direction of Keith’s choosing, his hands firm on Shiro’s hips as the prince nudges Shabrang into a steady canter. It feels good to be at his back again, so close he can feel each of the prince’s inhaled breaths. There’s a soothing quality to the rhythm of Shabrang’s pace, and for a few moments— warm and content as he’s gently rocked by the horse’s strides— Keith thinks he could drift into a catnap.

“Did we pass a farm this way?” Shiro asks, voice rousing the knight pressed against his back.

“No. I’m looking for a wild one,” he says against the slope of Shiro’s broad shoulder. “Small, cherry bay, as fast as Shabrang is strong. I saw her a day ago, being chased to exhaustion by a pack of desert monitors. I think she’s still close.”

He can’t say how or why he knows it, but a year alone has taught Keith to trust his instincts.

Shiro makes a soft sound of understanding that blossoms into low, easy laughter. It catches in the wind and delights Keith’s ears. “Wild. _Of course_. It sounds like she’ll suit you well.”

It can’t be more than a quarter of an hour later when they stumble upon the lithe little mare beside a miniscule watering hole under a lonesome tree, her ears turning warily at Shabrang’s heavy approach.

Shiro clasps Keith’s hand to steady him as he dismounts. “I’ll stay back here with Shabrang. I’d hate to startle her away.”

Keith pockets a kneejerk objection. Shiro is right to hang back, and he won’t be too far to reach if needed.

He approaches the wild horse with slow, telegraphed moves, a soft whistle, and a fat apple he’d squirreled away in his pack the last time he passed an orchard. He crouches low to make himself small and unthreatening. It takes time for the bay to grow tolerant of his presence, and longer still for her to take the first wary steps toward him, her nose testing the air for the sweet scent of fruit.

By the time she finally ventures close, with her nostrils flared and her ears swiveling back and forth, Keith’s legs ache and sweat dots his brow. The red mare regards him for a few drawn, tense moments— and then she bends her neck to snap through the crisp skin of the apple, voraciously gobbling it down before lipping at his juice-covered palm for more.

“That’s all, girl,” Keith says, voice pitched low and soft. “Sorry.”

Red— it’s what he’s already thinking of her as— allows him to stroke up her nose and along her cheek while she sniffs him over for additional treats.

“If you come with me, there’s more where that came from,” he murmurs as warm, wet breaths ruffle his hair. “Do you remember me from the other day?”

The bay snorts, sending a wet spray across the back of Keith’s neck, and shuffles her feet impatiently.

Keith rises slow, the muscles in his thighs quivering after sitting crouched for so long, until he is nearly eye-to-eye with the small, wild beast. He waits while the mare dances around him, as fleet of foot as she’d been the last time he laid eyes on her, and then he takes a slow step backward. And another. More and more, until she begins to follow him at a distance.

Shiro is seated in the grass a ways behind him, under the shade of a scrubby shrub, rubbing a pale green stalk between his fingers while Shabrang grazes happily a few feet away.

“I think she likes me,” Keith says as he gets closer. A half-turn back shows that Red still follows, alert but eager, her ears directed inquisitively toward the unfamiliar man and horse before her.

“I don’t know why I’m surprised, at this point.” Shiro’s eyebrows are raised in amazement, but his easy, fond smile balances out the look. “The hawks took an instant liking to you, too. And the dogs.”

“You, too.” Under a sheen of sweat and a thin coat of windswept dust, Keith’s skin blushes bright for saying it.

Impressively, Shiro’s brows rise a smidge higher. The laugh that follows is warmed through with knowing affection. “And me, too. Something about you is just inherently likeable, I suppose.”

Keith grunts and settles down beside Shiro, eyes following the mare as she tentatively approaches Shabrang. She’s as nervous as she is curious, and the combination has her darting in and away from the larger horse like a dragonfly. “My life experience says otherwise,” he mutters, “but I’m glad I at least had that effect on _you_.”

Shiro’s amused, throaty hum is joined by a faraway smile, like he’s reminiscing over their first meeting.

The thought inflames Keith’s veins and crushes sweetly against the heart within his chest. It’s one of the great, defining moments of his life, even if Keith didn’t know it at the time— and how little he’d known, back then. How little he’d thought of Shiro at that first passing glance; how little regard he’d had for Shiro’s opinion of him; how little he’d known that one day, the very man he’d nearly slain would be his sun and stars.

“We ought to be getting back,” Shiro says after a minute more. He eyes the mare as he pushes himself to his feet, dark eyes keen as she grazes beside Shabrang. She’s still wary, her small ears flicking toward the two of them where they stand in the receding shade, but Red is markedly less agitated than she had been just five minutes earlier. “I’ll be damned.”

Keith smirks back, swiping blindly at Shiro as he mutters teasing comments about Keith’s ability to bewitch anyone and anything that sees him. “C’mere, Red,” he says to the small mare, whistling softly.

“Do you think you’ll be able to ride her?” Shiro asks. He seems to second-guess himself a moment after— _of course_ Keith does. Even untamed horses bow before his determined will. Instead, he asks, “Bareback?”

“I’ve done it plenty of times,” Keith answers. His voice is tempered low, soft— purposefully, to keep Red calm as he closes the gap between them. “I didn’t have time to saddle Shabrang before I took off from the Garrison, and I got by without for weeks.”

He can hear Shiro’s distant sigh— almost exasperated, but fond, too— but he’s close enough to Red that his focus shifts. Her nose is soft against his palm as she searches for an apple that he doesn’t have, fuzzy lips brushing over the calluses born from years of heavy sword training. She allows him to stroke her cheek without more than a snort against his chest, and soon enough Keith is rubbing his hands along her flanks and spine to test the waters.

He’s murmuring a steady stream of sweet reassurances as he prepares to climb astride Red, and he can hear Shiro’s laughter when it takes a few tries to get enough leverage to heave himself across her back. But once Keith is up, it feels _right_.

Red skitters under him for a few moments, unused to a human’s weight, but Keith is able to soothe her with a hand down her long neck and a comforting murmur that has her ears flitting back to listen.

“By the gods’ breath,” Shiro says, looking at him atop Red with an expression that never fails to make Keith’s heart skip, no matter how many times Shiro wears it. He knows it from momentous occasions— like when Shiro first saw him cornered in that alley, sword hanging over his neck— and quiet moments alike. It’s the same soft look as the first time Keith helped Shiro sew shut a slice along his ribs, or showed Shiro how his father used to make rabbit stew, or when he managed to haltingly read through his first page of a book.

“It’s not a big deal,” Keith replies as Shiro mounts Shabrang and cautiously guides the larger animal over. He keeps a hand steady on Red to reassure her as the two horses exchange inquisitive sniffs, but it almost feels unneeded.

“Few people could do what you just managed,” Shiro snorts as he turns Shabrang and starts heading back toward the shack and their companions. “Even Shabrang threw me a few times before deciding I was worthy. Didn’t you?” he asks, all affection as he pats his horse with his human hand.

Keith follows just half a length behind, keeping his red-cheeked smile to himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn’t want to mess with timey wimey trickery so I’m just running with their post-S6 age difference from the start. In this AU, they first met when Keith was around 16 and Shiro was about 21, and they spent 3-4 years together before Shiro’s initial disappearance.
> 
> Lots of flavor words drawn from Dragon Age because I’m bad at coming up with words/names. I borrowed a lot from Qunlat in particular, though I tweaked some of the meanings. :)
> 
> These are me: [@neyasochi](https://neyasochi.tumblr.com) and [@valsaann](https://twitter.com/Valsaann)!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The paladins' journey.

Keith finds it strange to be leading the party, though it makes sense given the circumstances. It’s his gut they’re following, after all, and the map he’s been charting in accordance. And the Ariz Wastes are still home to him, which means he’s the one to point out the half-buried dens of Khopesh scorpions before anyone wanders too close and rouses the oversized creatures from their rest, and the first to scent water and grazing land as they traverse the inhospitable terrain.

He’s so used to following at Shiro’s flank, though, and misses it keenly. He has to crane his neck and look back every time he wants to check on Shiro, who is all too comfortable with letting Keith take point.

It’s an awkward ride with company. Keith wishes well and often that it was just he and Shiro as traveling companions so that they might talk freely. The Garrison knight-cadets moan about the heat and the sun, unaccustomed to the indifferent harshness of the Wastes; Keith doesn’t pay it much mind other than doling out advice on protecting the skin and eyes from the scouring light.

He drops back to a pace even with Shiro— who’s been quiet while he more or less brings up the rear— for a moment to make sure he’s comfortable. The prince lacks armor or even padding, and the threadbare fabric of his borrowed shirt does little to ward off the sun.

“Wear this,” Keith says as he digs out an old shirt of his and drapes it over Shiro’s shoulders, taking care to make sure it shields his neck. He fishes out a protective balm and hands it to Shiro, too. “And put this on your bare skin.”

“Can I get some of that?” Lance asks as Keith rides back to the front, craning his neck to try and see what Shiro is doing with it.

“No,” Keith breezily answers. There’s barely enough for Shiro and no one else here registers as comparable priority.

Lance simmers at the rejection, but since it’s for Shiro he stomachs the decision.

Another hour passes, judging by the crawl of the sun, and Keith checks his map to estimate when they ought to stop to rest and water the horses.

Hunk tries to make conversation in the meantime, breaking the nervous silence that Keith thinks probably stems from the crown prince’s presence. “So, you grew up out here, Keith?”

“Yup,” he answers. It puts him on edge, though he doubts Hunk of all people means to shame him for it. Too many years of wary looks and unsavory comments about his background have left Keith primed for needling remarks, though.

“Oh. That’s pretty cool. I mean, it’s really paying off now, huh?” Hunk muses out loud to the group. “I guess your roots here must run pretty deep?”

“No,” Keith responds without thinking, “my father came here after—”

He stops short, catching himself, but the little slip is enough.

Lance lets out a knowing laugh that makes Keith’s stomach squirm. “Right, right. So, was your father a thief or a deserter?”

“Lance.” The prince’s tone is sharp, only just shy of cutting. It humbles Lance enough for him to go quiet, all traces of smug amusement vanished.

“He was a deserter,” Keith answers anyway, quiet enough that he wonders if the others even heard. A deserter from the queen’s army, after he grew sick and tired of unending war and the commands of uncaring knight-commanders. His father had left his old life behind— family and their name included— and rebuilt anew in the bleak shelter of the Ariz Wastes.

“I always liked reading about the Ariz Wastes,” Pidge contributes to break up the tension. “But actually being here? Not so much. The history is fascinating, though, especially when you consider how much of the Altean Empire was concentrated in this region of Arus. Of course, that was before Daibazaal turned and the Galra Empire rose and sundered the land. They say this used to be one of the lushest regions on the continent, you know.”

“Oh, yeah, and the culture is so different,” Hunk chimes in, “and I feel like seeing the Ariz Wastes firsthand is pretty enlightening. It explains a lot of what shapes the people here. Very individualistic, self-sufficient. Emphasis on personal accomplishments and resilience. Meat-based diet. Little use of family names.”

“Don’t people from the Wastes make up their own surnames sometimes?” Pidge asks, her glasses flashing as she adjusts them against the beat of the sun for the hundredth time. “Like in that story— Bonnie Stonecrush.”

Keith shrugs. After hearing it ad nauseum during his short stint in an orphanage in the capital, Keith doesn’t much care for the tale or how it reflected on people from the Wastes. “Sometimes. Surnames and family lineage don't have much bearing out here, though, so usually people don’t bother.”

“But you could do it, if you wanted,” Hunk says with a little shrug. “Sounds kind of fun, actually. You could pick something perfectly tailored to your whole… mystique. Thing.”

Keith’s brow furrows. The suggestion seems harmless, but he doesn’t understand the point. “Why would I do that?” he asks. “I told you earlier, I already have a surname.”

“Oh?” Lance blinks innocently as he ambles his horse closer to Hunk, leaning past his bulk to see Keith. “Since when? The Garrison instructors never addressed you as anything but _Keith_. What kind of secret surname have you been holding onto—”

“Kogane.”

It’s worth saying just for the sour pucker of Lance’s lips and the way he shrivels into a salty little prune in his saddle, utterly at a loss. A petty part of Keith wishes he’d gone ahead and dropped that powder keg while still at the Garrison, regardless of the uproar that would have inevitably followed. The rest of him is left shifting uncomfortably at Pidge and Hunk’s twin exclamations of surprise. He can feel their stares, curious and amazed, and the attention doesn’t sit right on him.

Both responses are exactly what he’d hoped to avoid in keeping that secret to himself. But there’s another reaction, too, and it’s far from unpleasant.

Keith feels… well, there isn’t really a word for what he feels as Shiro brings Shabrang up from the rear, the massive horse and its striking rider briefly eclipsing the three knight-cadets in their party. The prince’s eyes are fixed on Keith as he passes— as warm and dark as coals, intent in a manner usually reserved for those sparring matches in which Shiro observed as Keith handily embarrassed knights with twice his training— and his smile is backed by deep and abiding satisfaction.

It leaves Keith’s throat dry and his palms slick around the reins.

“But Kogane is only for _royal retainers_ ,” Lance argues, dragging Keith back to the conversation at hand. His gaze shoots back and forth between Keith and the prince, settling on Shiro as the older man slows Shabrang’s willful pace until he’s comfortably in-line with the rest of them. “It’s _honorary_. Only the people closest to the Shirogane clan are given that surname!”

“So it is.” Shiro’s little matter-of-fact nod gives Keith renewed life.

At a loss, Lance directs his confusion toward Keith. “You? But how? _You?_ And why weren’t you using it at the Garrison?!”

Keith nudges Red closer and leans in toward Lance, as if it’s another big secret he’s about to let Lance be privy to. “Because I didn’t want people bothering me with questions.”

“You— huh.” That seems to stop Lance short. He mulls it over for a few silent minutes, his bottom lip jutting out.

 _Good_.

As far as wax seals and court-signed documents are concerned, Keith cares little. He imagines any papers that prove him as _Keith Kogane_ have long since been burned. Shiro’s own family had resisted even while the prince was living; now presumed dead, it would be only too easy to erase what they saw as a brash action that weakened the distinction of the Kogane title— a title that comes with a hefty royal stipend and the rights of nobility. But even those boons are nothing compared to the true gift that Shiro bowed and scraped and butted heads to obtain for him: a future, a strong foundation that would endure even after Shiro’s passing.

 _Kogane_ is a name that opens doors within Arus, for the few who hold it. It was the loophole that Shiro had used to pressure the Garrison into admitting a lowborn orphan from the Wastes— though it had come with strings attached, like stipulations that the arrangement be kept quiet to avoid scandal and lessen the outrage of noble-born Koganes.

But that was before he abandoned the Garrison and the path toward social ascension and high command it offered. Not that any of it had mattered without Shiro there to make it meaningful, to make proud. When Keith left that life, he’d left behind the trappings of that life and taken everything that mattered with him, which included the Kogane name— written on his heart, where Shiro had put his claim.

“Keith is my right hand,” Shiro says, smiling fondly. “He earned his place by my side and the name Kogane as well. But certain circumstances made it… necessary to be subtle.”

“Life in the palace sounds unbearable,” Pidge grumbles after a moment.

“It is,” Keith agrees instantly, his stare locking with Shiro’s. It had certainly had its bright spots, amid the stuffy discussions that lasted for days and pointless jostling for favor and poisoned flattery. “Or _was_.”

“It was exciting, though, right?” Lance asks, looking to Keith and Shiro in turn for confirmation. “All those balls and garden parties and big feasts… hundreds of new people to meet, nonstop social engagements, the stars of Arus all in one place! Ah, be still my heart.”

Keith almost laughs when Shiro pulls a face at Lance’s words, his nose wrinkling and his tongue sticking out. It’s half from joyful relief at the sight of Shiro dropping a little more of his proper princely facade, even around the relative unknowns of their new companions.

“Wish I could’ve had you there to go as my proxy,” Shiro mutters, unaware of what he’s done as the mere suggestion sends Lance into something bordering on bliss. “Those things always wore my patience down to the bone.”

“Ugh. Same.” Pidge matches the prince’s look of distaste with one of her own. “It’s just a bunch of people ambling around a ballroom together. Who even enjoys that? I honestly do not get the appeal. Outside of all the food, I mean.”

“Aw, Pidge… do you not know how to dance, perchance?” Lance teases, his grin growing smugger with every flustered denial she makes, until at last Pidge confesses that she blew off her lessons to spend time reading instead.

Keith has to give credit where it’s due— Lance seems to be at his most insightful when there’s an embarrassing or otherwise sensitive moment to suss out and exploit.

“Alright, let’s stop up ahead to give the horses a rest,” he announces over Lance’s mocking offers to teach Pidge how to dance and Hunk’s beleaguered attempts to mediate.

They break into their rations again, whittling down the food supply by almost half, and Keith knows that he’ll need to hunt soon if they don’t want to wind up as scraps for the buzzards.

The next leg of the ride takes them to the shadow of Parashant, a looming butte topped by a crumbling fortress from ages past, the castle carved into the very rock itself. The way up the towering formation of stone is too treacherous to attempt, and Keith sees no need to press it. They make camp at the butte’s base, backed by the sheer wall of earth, and forage nearby to supplement their remaining rations.

“Looks good,” Keith says as he scans over the sparse collections of food Hunk and Pidge come back with. There are flat sections of cactus, already cleaned of spines, and edible flowers. They’ll pair nicely with the snake Keith killed earlier with a thrown dagger.

“Yeah? Well check this out, I found berries.”

Keith zeroes in on Lance, and then the cupped handful of juicy red berries in his hands. “Those are poisonous. Throw them somewhere the horses won’t get to them and clean your hands.”

“Poisonous?” Lance whines, suddenly worried.

“Not enough to kill you.” He reconsiders after a moment, thoughtful. “Well, the berries wouldn’t kill you directly. Dehydration from the endless, burning shits _might_ , though.”

Lance grumbles as he stalks off to dispose of the berries, but not before offering some parting words. “Once we find a river or a coast, it’s over for you guys! I’ll catch so many fish we’ll be up to our gills in ‘em! You hear me?”

Hunk sighs as he watches his friend go. The prospect of fixing dinner seems to hearten him. “If you skin the snake, Keith, I’ll roast it.”

“Never cleaned one before?” Keith asks as he lops the head off and works his fingers under the skin.

“Uh, we do eels on the Isles. Is it the same?”

Keith has no idea. He shrugs before stripping the snakeskin clean off and handing the limp length of raw meat to Hunk.

“Uh, thanks. I’ll, uh, let you know when it’s ready,” Hunk says, grimacing as he gingerly takes the dead snake. “Pidge! Give me a hand here.”

Content with that, Keith stalks back to where Shiro is settled at the outskirts of their camp, near the edge of the firelight. He grunts as he lowers himself to sit beside his prince, feeling the ache of riding a little more keenly now that he doesn’t have a saddle. He draws his sword to occupy his hands with something, figuring he’ll make another go at smoothing the little nick in the blade.

Shiro regards him with a small smile before looking past Keith, toward the fire at the center of camp where Hunk, Pidge, and Lance surround their cooking supper.

“Did you ever talk to any of them before? At the Garrison?” Shiro asks, quiet.

Under the weight of Shiro’s patient interest, he pauses and looks toward the others. “Not really,” Keith says before turning back to his sword. “But I think Hunk and Pidge were training in non-combatant specialities. And I don’t remember much of Lance other than him being loud.”

“He’s from the Vela Rivera family, on the Varaderian Coast,” Shiro explains. “An old family. A _big_ family. I remember visiting their stronghold a few times when I was younger. Their table was longer than the one in the royal banquet hall, and even so it was a tight fit. And they do love their balls and banquets.”

Keith grunts. During his time at the palace, he would train alone while Shiro attended obligatory diplomatic events and parties. Even so, he’d occasionally catch a glimpse at the world inside: crowded with nobles and foreign visitors, rakish eyes that hunted for faux paus and artless bobbles, the gossip that filtered down to the servants’ rooms and kitchens. If the small, stifling dinners he sometimes accompanied Shiro to were any metric to go by, such grand occasions would likely be enough to make Keith spontaneously combust.

“Their ships comprise half of Arus’ fleet. Every high admiral in the last two-hundred years has been a Vela Rivera. Lance’s eldest sister was tapped to be the next, last I knew. They’re our main bulwark against sea raids, though I’ve also heard that one of the family’s daughters has become a fearsome pirate in her own right.” The soft laugh that follows suggests he thinks it’s more of a family squabble and a nuisance than an actual threat to the crown— at least for now. “They even claim to have some royal mermaid blood in their lineage, you know.”

“Do you really believe that?” Keith asks, stifling a little laugh.

“Oh, it’s not wise to argue it,” Shiro tells him, still smiling crookedly. “They’re hardly the first or only Varaderians to say as much. It’s not even the wildest claim to make. _I_ grew up hearing that one of my ancestors could turn into a lion on the battlefield, so…”

“ _That one_ I believe,” Keith teases, chuckling as the prince rolls his eyes. “I’ve seen you in battle. Pretty sure I heard you roar once.”

“Did you?” Shiro asks, nose scrunching doubtfully. He tilts his head as he looks to the other three by the fire. “The Holts are another long-serving family, though their skills have always lain in more… advisory capacities. They’re all very clever and highly-educated.”

Shiro’s gaze slips downward for a moment, catching on the plated fingers of his spell-wrung metal arm. “If I survived this long, Lord Sam and Matt might have, too. I wish I could remember with any certainty… maybe save Pidge the trouble of getting killed looking for them. I’d rather not see the whole Holt line perish in my service.”

“I think she’ll be okay,” Keith tells him. He scoots a little closer to Shiro’s side, until the prince leans on his shoulder as he’d hoped. “She’s creative and well-trained, and probably too smart to follow through on anything senseless.”

That seems to encourage Shiro a little. He hums thoughtfully and adds, “I don’t know much about Hunk, but he seems like good company. I’m a little surprised I didn’t meet him when I visited the Vela Riveras. The Stone Isles have always maintained very close ties to the Varaderian Coast, if not the rest of the kingdom.”

“He’s talented,” Keith agrees with a little yawn.

The prince makes a quiet noise, but only speaks a few minutes later. “You know, when I sent you to the Garrison, I’d hoped you might make some friends among the nobility there. People in the palace are too…”

“Judgmental? Petty?” Keith helpfully supplies, earning a laugh from Shiro. “Untrustworthy? Busy trying to kiss your ass with one side of their mouth and spit on me with the other?”

Shiro hides a smile behind his hand— old and habitual, his fallback whenever the mask of courtly coolness unexpectedly breaks and too much genuine emotion shows through. “I thought some distance from me and the fixtures of the palace might make your life a little easier. Give you a break from all the bullshit that gets caught in my orbit.”

Keith nods along, scratching at the corner of his mouth with a fingertip. “I can handle the bullshit. I never need a break from being around you,” he says first, feeling it important to address. “But… it’s not like I didn’t try, Shiro. I promise. I just don’t see eye to eye with most people. I’m not any good at first impressions.”

Shiro clucks his tongue as he considers that, his lower lip sticking out thoughtfully. “You left a big one on me.”

Keith snorts. “Size of my boot across your face, maybe.”

There’s a call from Pidge for them to come eat, and it has Shiro groaning out as he slowly stands and stretches his sore limbs.

Keith reaches up and catches him by the hand without thinking, and the sensation startles them both.

It’s Shiro’s right hand— claw-tipped and cool to the touch, overlapping plates hard and smooth under Keith’s fingers, like gripping a gauntlet. It seems worse to let go, as if frightened of Shiro, and so Keith maintains his hold even as the prince goes rigid at the unexpected contact.

He’s not surprised when Shiro leans into the gesture and wordlessly heaves him up onto his feet, strong enough that Keith finds himself fully off the ground for a sliver of a second, even as the prince is so, _so_ cautious of the claws that tip his fingers. That metal hand clasped around his own has him almost stupefied, and Keith realizes it’s the first time he’s felt it, really. He realizes Shiro’s been doing this the whole time— attentively keeping this new part of him clear of Keith and everyone else, refraining from touching anyone with it.

It pulls Keith’s heart in different directions all at once.

He holds fast to Shiro, working his fingers as he feels along the delicately forged joints and the curved juts of claw. It’s foreign blood magic and they’re right to be wary of it, and he hates all that the monstrous limb means to his prince, but Keith can’t stomach the thought that Shiro thinks any part of him isn’t deserving of a kind touch.

Slowly, Shiro’s false hand flexes against his own, one finger at a time, testing. He’s so careful of their taloned tips, watching every minuscule moment to ensure he doesn’t so much as prick Keith’s hand.

“What answers do you think you’ll find out here? With me?” Keith asks quietly, his thumb sliding up Shiro’s wrist to brush over the faintly glowing runes carved there.

Shiro sighs heavy through his nose as he pulls their hands apart, though their knuckles still brush as they walk side by side toward the others. “I don’t know, Keith. Probably none, in all likelihood,” he shrugs. “I don’t know what’s to become of me, at this point—”

“Shiro, don’t—”

“But as long as I have you at my side, I can rest a little easier along the way.”

Once by the fire, Shiro’s bleak outlook is neatly concealed behind kind smiles and a patient listening ear, as if nothing is terribly amiss with the Arusian prince, and Keith finds that more worrisome than the Galra arm itself.

 

* * *

 

Dawn of the fourth day of their travels finds them waking beside a small creek carved deep into the bedrock, roused by the first bright glimmers of the rising sun.

Keith wakes first, though he’s still tired from the late night hunt that only yielded him a scrawny desert hare and a stringy grouse. He’s closer to Shiro’s side than he was when he fell asleep and the proximity to his warmth is comforting— until Keith hears the stifled gasps, the words trapped in Shiro’s throat, senses the frantic twitching through his body.

He runs a hand up Shiro’s side to wake him, palm settling soft on the prince’s cheek as he attempts to gently pull him from the nightmare that has him shaking in his sleep.

Shiro’s eyes fly open, wide and harried, darting wildly until he sees Keith and recognition settles in. It’s as if he’s come to life under Keith’s hand, breaths steadying back into their normal rhythm.

“What did you dream of?” he asks as he smooths away the white strands that cling to Shiro’s forehead.

“That I was staked to the earth while insects ate away at me, piece by piece,” Shiro murmurs, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment. When they reopen, he finds Keith and manages a relieved sigh. “Thank you for waking me. And thank you for staying so close.”

“You don’t have to thank me, Shiro,” Keith whispers. “This is exactly where I want to be.”

“I know,” Shiro accepts, lips curling again into a soft, tired smile. “And I’m grateful for it.”

They have water, but nothing to eat, and Keith’s first worry is what he’ll do for Shiro. Supper last night was sparse, and Keith fell asleep to the sound of his prince’s stomach growling and a guilt that gnawed at him just as severely. He wakes the others as he passes through camp toward the horses, pausing to swat a scorpion off of Lance before he notices it and throws a screaming fit.

“What was that?” Lance asks as he sees something small and dark go flying past. He sits up, arms stretched on either side of him for support. “What the hell was that, Keith? Was it _crawling_ on me?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Keith says as he walks a few paces to the skittering bug and crushes it under his heel. “Dead now.”

He ignores Lance’s borderline panic as the archer shoots to his feet and immediately starts patting himself down in fear of other creeping arachnids. Shabrang, too, is unfazed by Lance’s hopping and flailing, and for that Keith is grateful.

He hums softly as he smoothes his hand across the horse’s coat, dark and lustrous underneath a cast of desert dust. Shabrang gives a little snort as Keith makes a small cut into his neck, nicking a vein, but his considerable bulk relaxes under a reassuring touch from Keith. He catches the thin trail of runoff blood in a small tin cup, patient as the flow steadily slows to a trickle.

There’s a brief confrontation with Lance before he’s done— because _of course_ there is, as always— and Keith crosses camp back to Shiro with a simmering anger in his belly. It does nothing for the hunger.

“It’s not much of a breakfast,” he sighs as he crouches down beside Shiro, cup in hand. The blood inside sloshes slow, clinging thickly to the inner surface. “But you need something in your stomach.”

Shiro hums tiredly— between the nightmares and the rigors of desert travel, he’s worn down— but accepts the small tin cup that’s held to his lips. His dark brows furrow as the metallic tang hits his tongue. The taste is never pleasant, but the prince manages to down half of it before he turns his head, a dark rivulet of blood leaking from the corner of his mouth.

Keith wipes it away with the flat of his thumb, and then licks his finger clean. _Waste not._

“Thank Shabrang for me,” Shiro says even as he gags and searches for a waterskin clean the taste from his mouth.

Keith grunts a response and drinks the rest of the blood himself. It’s not much, as far as sustenance goes, but still better than nothing at all. The flavor of it doesn’t bother him like it does Shiro; in fact, though Keith wouldn’t make a habit of saying it, he doesn’t mind the taste at all. It reminds him of meals with his father, of meat charred by open flames but still raw at the center.

“We’d be better off if we had a mare with milk,” he complains. “Mine doesn’t have any, and neither does Lance’s. And he was _horrified_ when he saw me bleeding Shabrang.”

Shiro makes a soft, thoughtful sound as he relaxes against Keith’s side in the pale haze of early morning. After a yawn, he mumbles, “Green soldiers from the coast always are. They’re not used to wide, barren places or long campaigns inland.”

Keith finds that rings true. He’d been impressed, in the first days after meeting Shiro, to hear the crown prince speak so long and often of the people and places he would one day rule. It was expected of a future-king, certainly, but it had always seemed more than that— Shiro’s love was for learning and exploring, and he won the hearts of people across Arus as he traveled the breadth and span of the land, visiting even the poorest and furthest flung regions of his domain.

Keith remembers their first conversation as Shiro had led him toward the palace, both of them still smarting from their wounds. That Prince Takashi pegged him as a Wastelander was nothing special, as Keith apparently had the look of it; but when the prince had been able to name the insignificant brushweed towns throughout Keith’s neck of the Ariz Wastes, he’d taken note. When Shiro listened with interest as Keith corrected him on details here and there, he’d done a double-take.

There’s a brief silence before the prince’s stomach growls low and prolonged, noisy even as Shiro wraps his arms around his waist to try and smother the sound. He sighs and drinks more water.

Keith hunches forward, watching as Pidge and Hunk begin to pack up their things. Lance, for his part, is still hopelessly searching for fish in the barren creek.

“First opportunity we get,” Keith whispers to Shiro, warm from the feel of Shiro’s human arm touching his own, “I’m going to get you some cheese. Mountain cheese, from that dairy you like so much. The one in Cloudcroft. A wheel as big as your head, Shiro.”

“Make it two.” His prince’s laugh is soft and muffled, more like a snort than anything else. “And what for you, Keith? What do you miss?”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve had chocolate.” Keith exhales slow as he thinks about it, trying to quell the yearning in his gut. Fruit dipped in melted chocolate, ganache, hot and heavily spiced chocolate to drink in winter. “You got me hooked on sweets at the palace.”

“Mmm, red bean cakes,” Shiro nearly groans, eyes already shut in faded bliss. His lips are dry, cracked, almost split from the arid heat; the scar across his nose looks more brutal over sunburnt skin. “Oranges in caramel sauce. Pancakes— no, honey toast with whipped cream. _That’s_ what I miss.”

“Then I’ll get you bread and honey, too,” Keith says, raising his voice over Shiro’s half-assed protestations. “I’d gladly fight a thousand angry bees for you.”

“My most loyal knight,” Shiro murmurs. His eyes are taupe in the pale light of dawn. Keith finds it distracting as his prince looks him dead-on. “I think we ought to make today a hunting trip. Postpone our travel.”

Keith can’t argue there. They’re all growing weaker with hunger, and the stretch of the Wastes that lies ahead is no kinder.

They convene and agreement is reached. Lance is adamant that he’ll find something in the creek, and so he continues to wander up and down its banks with his speartip hovering just above the water. Pidge and Hunk plan to set up traps and snares to catch creatures as they come to drink, though there’s some butting of heads over which types will work best.

And Keith takes Shiro out to search for antelope or monitors or anything else they can make a meal of. The prince borrows Lance’s bow for the hunt, as Keith is too doubtful of the condition of his sword to entrust it to Shiro. It’s a good arrangement, Keith thinks— Shiro has always been a good shot, even from horseback.

Keith remembers watching him train on longbows strung so taut that lesser archers couldn’t even use them. He can still picture the way Shiro’s shoulders bunched and flexed with power as he drew back, arrow nocked and ready, muscles rippling under the morning sun. When Shiro let loose, his shots could punch through targets, splitting the wood hidden behind the thick pad of hard-packed straw. Enemy legions parted for the Lion of Arus when he was still three-hundred, four-hundred yards distant— even mounted knights in heavy plate turned their horses when faced with him, frightened of the man whose power could send an arrow through steel and bone with ease.

But now Shiro struggles to find a way to draw the bow with the rending talons of his right hand, casting apologetic looks at Keith as they ride side-by-side. “I may not be of much help today…”

“You’ll figure it out,” Keith encourages.

He does, to some degree. A few practice shots wobble and go wide, and they lack Shiro’s usual force, but they’re not much worse than what Keith manages. The prince dutifully rides and picks up each arrow from where they stick in the earth, not wanting to waste a single one when good trees are so few and far between out here.

Keith finds faint tracks to follow and within the hour Shiro bags one desert grouse, grinning wide as he succeeds in making a clean kill. Keith retrieves it for him, tying the dead bird to the prince’s saddle before they continue on in search of larger prey. He’s quick to remind Shiro that he knew all his talents would come back to him, enjoying the color that rises over Shiro’s cheeks— not from the sun, for once.

They amble onto a stretch of hilly land, and Keith gets a good feel for it. He sits up straight atop Red’s back, thighs squeezing tighter around her sides. Beyond one of these sandy hills is a pack of antelope— he knows it in his gut, though he can’t say how or why. So close that Keith can scarcely hold himself still. If he can ride down just _one_ , they’ll be set on meat for at least a few days.

He tells Shiro as much, and the prince grins wide.

“Never did come back empty handed when you were my hunting partner.” The prince surveys the rolling hills, bare of everything but some scrubby grasses, and says, “We can each ride to the top of one and get a quick lay of the land. Get an eye for where they might be hiding.”

Keith is excited as he trots Red up the nearest rise, already thinking of how he’ll come back to Shiro— with a kill slung over Red’s back, a small triumph that would lift Shiro’s spirits and nurse his health.

But he sees nothing, and neither does Shiro from the hill adjacent. With a signal, they agree to move forward in parallel, separated by some hundred yards. They crest another hill, and then one more, but all Keith finds is more scrubland dotted with withered trees along the shallow slopes.

It’s the heat, maybe, that makes Keith sluggish and careless. The lack of a good meal eats at his focus. The thrill of a hunt distracts him. The shine, so bright across pale, sunbleached earth, dulls his sight. Whatever the reason, the failing is his own.

That’s what he thinks as he hears Shabrang’s frightened scream, pulling every hair on his body to a terrified stand. It’s what he knows with soul-leveling certainty as he turns and sees Shiro, so far from his reach and armed with just a half-drawn bow, bracing himself for the lunge of a giant Khopesh scorpion as it bursts from under the loose, sandy earth.

This is his fault, for failing to protect Shiro _again_.

Keith has no bow to strike it from afar, and Shiro has no sword to protect himself at close range. And it’s stupid, stupid, _stupid_. The thought rattles through him with every beat of Red’s hooves over the earth as he spurs her toward Shiro as fast as she can bolt. _Reckless, foolish, stupid_. It hammers at the inside of his skull, just under the tidal rush of blood that sings through his ears— _you’ve lost him, again_.

It’s fear, cold and simple, that moves through his veins. It sits in his limbs so heavy that Keith feels he’s stuck in a dream, moving as fast as he can but getting nowhere at all.

Shabrang has no time to react, strong haunches bunched as he reels back to evade the whiplike crack of bone-snapping claws that barely miss his forelegs. He sidesteps, but it’s not enough.

Shiro has only a split-second before the scorpion’s tail wallops into him, ripping him from Shabrang’s saddle and throwing him to the earth with enough force to dash the air from his lungs and send a cloud of earth billowing up around him.

It steals Keith’s breath, too. He fumbles for his blade as Red races closer, heart lodged so high in his throat that he fears he might choke on it.

The dust thins and Keith can see Shiro’s managed to catch the scorpion’s tail in his metal hand, talons gripping hard into the bulbous tip to hold the foot-long stinger at bay. Pinned down, he can do nothing more than push back against the razor tip that inches steadily closer to his unarmored chest.

The Khopesh scorpion soon tires of Shabrang’s distraction— gnashing and flailing his sharp, heavy hooves, desperate to protect his master— and turns a fat, shiny pincer on Shiro, scissoring wide open to encompass its prey.

But Keith flings his dagger first, bridging the distance that he needs a few more seconds to close. The shot lands true, fitting snugly in the thin little seam between the halves of the scorpion’s pincer, earning a high-pitched, inhuman scream of agony and sparing Shiro from being cut in half.

At last Keith is close enough to slip from Red’s back and roll toward Shiro and the scorpion. He draws his sword as he moves, slicing a row of the scorpion’s legs out from under it, and then swings it up to hack off the barbed tip of its tail—

Only to have the dulled blade catch in the space between segmented plates, so firmly lodged that he can’t pull it free.

“Oh, _fuck_ —”

The heavy swing of a pincer hits him right in his gut and sends Keith flying backward, tumbling down the hill to land in a heap. Gritty dust sticks to the inside of his mouth as he gasps for breath, and above the ringing in his ears, he can hear the worried shrieks of the horses and Shiro’s own screams.

But when Keith lifts his head and scrambles forward, it’s not the scene he’d feared— Shiro crushed or dismembered by killing claws, speared through by a swordlike barb. It’s something _different_ and altogether horrifying.

Shiro’s arm is aglow, laced in that ominous aura of red-violet light. The prince’s human hand is gripped around the messy seam of scarring where his flesh meets the prosthetic, choked back screams slipping out through tightly grit teeth.

“Shiro!” Keith’s never felt so helpless. Both of his blades are still lodged in the scorpion’s joints, and even willing to claw the thing apart barehanded, he just can’t close the gap in time. “Shiro, fall back to me!”

The Khopesh scorpion chitters and shrieks, enraged, as it lunges forward with its unharmed claw drawn wide, ready to close around Shiro and snap him in two—

There’s a sudden flare of light in the same bright color as the runes across Shiro’s arm, and the scorpion writhes instantaneously. Its arm smokes and sizzles where the claw has been severed, the flesh within its exoskeleton scenting the air as it burns. When the beast lunges again, uneven and maddened by its hobbled state, Shiro drives his glowing arm through the chitinous armor; it slides through up to the elbow, piercing what passes for a skull, the wet crunch and the ensuing hiss of steam both resounding and final.

Keith is tentative as he approaches the prince’s side, both for falling short of his oath and for worry of the newly awakened nature of his arm.

“Shiro…”

“Keith,” he responds, as if on instinct. He turns slow, avoiding Keith’s eyes, his good hand trembling as he holds the glowing arm against his chest. His fingers tighten. “I don’t know how to make it stop.”

The ragged grimace that follows pierces Keith’s heart through. He’s within arm’s reach in a second, hands naturally going to the tense slopes of Shiro’s shoulders, fingers brushing the strained cords along his neck.

“It’s going to be okay,” Keith says, willing himself to believe it, if only for Shiro’s sake. He can feel the race of the prince’s pulse, as rapid as if he was still in the heat of battle. “I think once you calm down, your arm will, too.”

It’s only a hunch, but Shiro listens. He shuts his eyes and leans forward into Keith’s touch, taking deep and steady breaths in time with his knight’s instruction. Minutes creep by and the pained little twitches across his brow slowly fade; the beaded sweat along his brow lessens like a broken fever.

It’s the same thing Shiro used to do for Keith when his temper got the better of him— grounding him, tethering him, sheltering him from a storm within. It’s only fair that he can pay it back in kind now.

“Better?” Keith asks. He peeks down between them and sees that Shiro’s arm has reverted back to its usual slumbering darkness, that malicious magenta light only glimpsed in flickers between the plates and coiled darkness underneath.

“Better,” Shiro sighs, letting his forehead thunk into Keith’s. His sweaty hair meets Keith’s dirt-covered face, creating an even worse mess between the two of them. “I didn’t know it could do that…”

“I know,” Keith says as he rubs up and down the prince’s shoulders.

Shabrang and Red join them, two inquisitive noses snuffling over the both of them to assess their state. Shabrang in particular is willful in his attachment, forcing his heavy head between Shiro and Keith to rub his cheek against his rider’s face.

The near giddiness of freshly defied death and the sight of Shiro’s sweaty face coated in short, dark horsehair combine to give Keith an honest laugh, grateful to all of existence that they pulled through. He still has Shiro— and Shabrang and Red— and that alone is enough to set him on top of the world for now.

“It’s not antelope meat,” Keith sighs as he pulls his dagger free from the carcass and wipes it clean. “But it’ll do. We can tie it to Shabrang and drag the damned thing back with us.”

Shiro hums thoughtfully, agreeing but only with half his attention. His walk is staggered— no doubt aching and bruised from the rude unhorsing and sapped from the fight— as he passes Keith and comes to a stop at the dead scorpion’s thick, coiled tail.

The sword is still lodged in between the segments of its armor, the blade looking even more brittle and ragged than it had before. Shiro runs his fingers lightly down the leather-wrapped handle, traces them over the elegantly wrought crossguard. He rubs the red-dyed horsehair between his bruised fingers.

“It’s lasted a long time,” the prince says, staring fondly at the beautifully crafted sword. “I’d hoped to commission you one better, once you graduated the Garrison. A little heavier, to account for the muscle you’d gain. The Kogane crest on the hilt. I’d already visited a few swordsmiths about it.”

It isn’t surprise that works its way through Keith’s chest, but something like it. Even knowing the goodness of Shiro’s golden heart, there are moments where Keith is puzzled that the prince would expend so much on him. _For_ him.

“You had this one custom made for me,” Keith softly accuses as he sidles close, shoulder bumping into Shiro, “and then tried to pretend it was one of your old cast-offs.”

“You’d have made a big fuss if I said I had it crafted for you,” Shiro says, and he’s right. Knows Keith too well, and knows how to give him what he wants but would never ask for.

There’s a lapse of silence, and Keith realizes just how tired Shiro is, despite his engagement and the quiet resolve of his demeanor. The prince wraps his left hand around the grip and gives the sword a gentle, testing tug. “It’s in deep,” he murmurs, twisting his wrist to feel how the blade reacts. “I don’t think it can be withdrawn without the blade snapping.”

Keith is unsurprised when he leans in and trails his fingers over the forged steel and finds a hairline crack. It’s the end for this beloved sword, he supposes, and it’s bitter. But it hurts less with Shiro by him.

The braid of red horsehair looped around the hilt is the one piece of it that Keith can take. With Shiro watching, he draws his dagger and carefully slices it free. Keith tucks it under his leather armor, between the light padding and his undershirt, and can feel the press of it against his flesh with every breath.

They’re fortunate that the others had better luck. A meal is already cooking when Keith and Shiro turn up with the carcass of a giant Khopesh scorpion trailing after them, and the shock mirrored in each of the three knights’ faces lets Keith know just how beat down he and Shiro look.

There’s no way to recount the events without Lance jumping down his throat— and rightly so, Keith judges— so he does it quick and direct, with the grit-jaw determination of pulling out an arrow in one swift tug.

The questions and lecturing last well into their meal, until Pidge at last begs Lance to let everyone eat in peace. It’s clear she has her own interest in prodding Shiro for answers— food falls from her mouth a few times when she gets lost staring at the Galra limb, no doubt lost in speculation— but she’s at least willing to give him time to recover, first.

Keith’s gaze slips to his left, eyeing Shiro as he silently wolfs down every bit of food that Hunk hands to him. There’s still that dogged heaviness to his limbs and how he moves, even just raising the makeshift bowl to his lips or biting the meat from charred bone, but he’s looking hale compared to an hour ago.

Once they’ve had their fill, Hunk enlists Keith in butchering and preserving what meat and fruit they managed to find. He even points out a clutch of four eggs that Lance found creekside. “Breakfast tomorrow. Lance was so proud he found them. I’m surprised he didn’t show Shi— Prince Takashi,” Hunk stumbles.

Keith smiles despite the heavy worry that seems to blanket the camp. “You all can probably call him Shiro, too. Just ask him.” He lays out strips of meat over the coals to smoke overnight, atop a rack that Hunk constructed from thick reeds. “ _Prince Takashi_ and _Your Highness_ are so formal.”

“Yeah,” Hunk agrees, “because he’s the prince. It’s respectful.”

Keith shrugs. “Not to disagree,” he says slow and careful, trying to pick words that won’t fall flat. “But I don’t think it’s what he needs to hear right now. I think he’d rather some familiarity. I think he’d like to just be Shiro for a while. Himself, you know, and not a… symbol.”

Keith thinks he has a better understanding now of Shiro’s reluctance to return to society and reclaim his throne. The reveal of his arm’s true and terrifying power is a concerning factor. Keith can imagine the shape and sharpness of Shiro’s fear, how demoralizing the loss of control of his own person must be. And how meaningful must it be to exercise a small measure of self-determination again— even if it’s to exile himself from his own kingdom.

Hunk’s dark brows furrow as he works the coals with a crooked branch he fished from the creek. He looks across camp to where the prince sits, stretched out at Lance’s side while he helps the archer re-string his bow, and lets out a melancholy sigh. “A year being… chattel,” he muses. “I’d just want to be treated like a person again, too.”

Keith’s washing up in the creek when he hears Hunk ask Shiro for permission to use his nickname instead of the formal title ingrained into the minds of every Arusian subject. He catches Shiro’s expression by the firelight— mouth slipped open in surprise, eyebrows nearly disappearing under the tuft of white that hangs over his forehead— and sees it melt into a rosy-cheeked smile.

“Of course,” Shiro answers, chuckling softly as Lance immediately jumps in to ask if he can use Shiro’s nickname, too. “All of you can, if you’d like. I’m more partial to it.”

“Why?” Pidge asks as she settles down near his feet, cross-legged.

Shiro shrugs a shoulder, his dark gaze flitting briefly to Keith. “Only a few people in the palace ever called me that, so when I heard it, I knew I didn’t have to stand on formality. And there are only so many times you can hear your own given name in one day before you come to tire of it,” he adds.

“It’s true,” Lance says, a hand folded under his chin as he looks lazily around the fire. “Every maiden across the Varaderian Coast adoringly whispers mine when I ride past, and it is _exhausting_.”

Pidge’s groan is loud and drawn out; Hunk follows it up with a doubtful grunt.

For his part, Shiro just smiles. It’s faint but it’s there, and Keith appreciates the levity for what it is.

But it doesn’t last. Can’t, with what happened today. Worry spreads like a contagion.

Pidge broaches it first, and Keith can’t say he’s surprised. She’s been remarkably patient in waiting to pry at Shiro, to pick apart his arm and his memories, to salvage what pieces will help in her quest. She hadn’t pressed when he’d clenched his jaw and told her _not yet, not now_.

“Shiro, I know it’s not an easy thing to talk about, or to show us, but… I think we need know what we’re working with. Your arm, I mean.”

Shiro goes quiet for a few drawn moments. He examines his hand where it lays in his lap, thoughtful as he feels his way up the joints of its wickedly clawed fingers. Without looking up, he nods.

Keith makes sure he’s close to Shiro— arm’s length and not an inch further away— to cut things short if it becomes too much for the prince.

Pidge inches close, small as she rests on bent legs, arms wrapped around her knees. Frowning, she looks almost guiltily at his arm. “Can I examine it? Do you mind?”

“Just be careful,” Shiro eventually determines, lifting the limb and stretching his hand toward her. He watches it like he’s expecting betrayal— like it’s a serpent with a mind of its own, liable to strike without warning.

And maybe it is.

“You said it suddenly glowed?” Pidge asks while carefully turning his palm over, nimble fingers tracing its construction. It’s not the first time she’s shown interest, but it’s the first time Shiro’s let her close, and there’s a fixed expression of apprehensive worry writ on his face.

“In combat,” Keith says. “Only after Shiro was endangered. And not right away, either.”

“It burned,” Shiro says. “I couldn’t see straight. Couldn’t think. Like— like a brand in my head, searing a path out. But it faded, after… I don’t know how long. It felt like an hour, but it wasn’t. Was it?” he asks Keith, squinting.

“No,” the knight assures him, his hand curling over Shiro’s shoulder. “It wasn’t.”

He stares down at the length of Shiro’s Galra arm while Pidge works. She’s quiet, diligent— with a set of artificer’s tools, she gently pokes and prods at the gleaming bands of metal that form the armor shell of his limb. Shiro flinches at every touch from her delicate, steel-tipped tools, and Keith’s hold on his shoulder firms up.

From what Keith can see, there are no visible joints to undo, no hinges or weld marks. The construction is elegant, seamless.h e individual pieces are high-quality forgework of a material he doesn’t recognize, but there’s nothing conventional holding it together. It’s that silky darkness slithering underneath that binds the metal and animates it into something approximating human. But the bright, saturated light that occasionally flickers through the dark and floods the engraven runes around his wrist? The magic that turns his arm into something sharper and deadlier than any sword? Keith can’t fathom what it is, other than dangerous.

“What’s your appraisal, Pidge?” the prince asks after a few minutes of her quiet tinkering.

There’s a little sweat across Pidge’s forehead, and she pushes her hair back to wipe it away with the back of a hand. “I… I’m not sure. Hunk, get in here.”

Keith shifts a little to make room, and Lance steps closer to crane over his shoulder.

“I don’t know how they did it, but this is _bonded_ to His Highness,” she says, almost in awe as she runs her fingers over the markings that encircle his wrist, his bicep, are etched onto the back of each finger. “It responds to his thoughts, just like a flesh-and-blood hand would, obviously. This sort of inorganic-to-organic binding isn’t something that can be done without demons and blood magic.”

“Except by the Alteans, though, right?” Hunk interjects, holding his chin. “I mean, there aren’t many records that predate the fall of Altea—”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Pidge says, expression pinched with pain. “The destruction of Altea set us back so far that we almost lost magical theory entirely. Our understanding is weak even compared to kingdoms in the east—”

“But Altean magic was centered on life-giving, healing, and growth. Construction,” Hunk interrupts, almost musing aloud. “This is similar, but twisted. Maybe the Galra turned to blood magic for their healing? Like, they replaced Shiro’s arm, but it’s not… right.”

“The Galra aren’t much more magically inclined than humans,” Pidge argues, brow furrowing deeper the longer she stares at Shiro’s arm. “Even for blood magic, this is _advanced_. Elegant, even, strictly in terms of how deftly it’s been done. People have become abominations while attempting blood magics far less complicated than this.”

Hunk rubs his chin thoughtfully. “The unholy marriage of Altean magic theory and good old-fashioned blood magic, maybe?”

Pidge snorts out loud. “The Alteans would never have tolerated their research being blended with blood magic by maleficar. And even when they were allies, Altea kept most of its magical discoveries to itself. How would the Galra manage something like this _millennia_ after all that knowledge was deliberately scoured from the earth?”

“Unless they hoarded the Alteans’ research for themselves and just ruined it for everyone else,” Lance says over Keith’s shoulder, shrugging.

“I mean… that’s entirely possible.” Pidge seems at a loss for a moment. Her expression turns dour and apologetic. “This is blood magic the likes of which I’ve never even read about, Shiro, and I wish I knew more to understand it.”

“Same,” Hunk says, sharing Pidge’s bleak look.

Shiro nods and smiles, briefly. “It’s about what I expected,” he says, hand flexing as he curls it into a first and uncurls it, then repeats.

“Here, look,” Pidge says as she rolls Shiro’s arm over and runs a sharp, pointed tool along a seam of the exposed darkness. “This looks like the animus— a spell that imbues something with life, or an approximation of it. It’s what the Alteans would use to create their city defenses. Stone or metal constructs would be built, and then an Altean alchemist would cast a spell to give them purpose.”

“I doubt it looked like _that_ when the Alteans did it, though,” Hunk observes.

As if to demonstrate, Pidge inserts the the tip of her screwdriver into the gap in the armor plating. The teeming, liquid darkness gathers and pushes back, and Keith sees a hint of magenta light seep into the runes along Shiro’s fingers— watches it halo the tips of his talons like the corona of an eclipse, alive with malevolence.

“Stop!” he orders at once, swiping at Pidge to back off. She drops the artificer tool and falls back, stunned, and Keith sighs in relief as the ominous glow recedes.

“I-I’m sorry,” Pidge hurries to say, still sprawled backward and breathing hard. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It isn’t your fault.” Shiro holds onto the arm like it belongs to someone else, white-knuckled and trembling with tightly contained fury. “It’s not your fault, Pidge.”

“It’s not yours either, Shiro,” Keith says as he crouches down beside him, arm sliding full around the prince’s broad shoulders. “It reacts on its own. You didn’t do that.”

“I’m well aware, Keith,” Shiro says, so much tight grit in his voice that Keith flinches back, swallowing down whatever he’d been about to say next. Shiro notices and his expression softens immediately. “That’s what worries me. I’m sorry, I’m just—”

“It’s okay,” Keith says. He’s rubbing his hand in circles at the base of Shiro’s neck, pressing the bones in his palm into incredibly tense muscle; he doesn’t remember when he started doing that. “It’s going to be okay, Shiro.”

Lance clears his throat nervously. “So, what happens if it… happens?” he asks, shy of meeting Shiro’s gaze. He rubs along the back of his nape and focuses on Keith instead. “What do we do to help? Or make it stop?”

Shiro’s lips part, and there’s a moment of quiet searching, the prince not looking at any one of them. Keith can feel the rise of his shoulders as his chest swells with a gut-deep breath. “Whatever you have to—”

“No,” Keith counters immediately. He glares at each of the other three in turn, intent on making sure they understand. It’s as much for their good as Shiro’s— Keith isn’t sure what sort of rage he’d fly into if he witnessed Shiro cut down before him. “No. You let me handle it.”

“Keith,” Shiro sighs, his head falling back onto Keith’s shoulder. The wave of white hair is thrown back, too; lovely grey eyes give Keith a softer version of the glare he just directed at their companions. “What I said goes for you, too.”

Keith’s reminded of a time he was pierced through with an arrow while riding at Shiro’s side, the pain burning between his ribs, catching fire all through him. He can’t separate that moment from what came after— Shiro holding him tight as the surgeon removed the bolt inch by painful inch, whispering comforting nonsense into his ear, his own bleeding wounds forgotten as he let Keith rake and claw him through it all.

“We could try to take the arm off.” It’s drastic. It carries its own risks, and Keith has seen men die upon the table after amputations. It hurts Keith to suggest it, but it’s preferable to any future in which Shiro’s heart and soul are lost for the sake of a fucking arm. “Here. Now. Before it threatens again.”

His jaw is set in grim misery, but the line of his mouth wavers.

Shiro is shocked for a heartbeat, but it’s quickly replaced with weary fondness. “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been thinking long and often about doing exactly that… but I would hate to ask it of you, Keith.”

Oh, and Keith hates it, too. The thought leaves his molars groaning and his mouth coated in bitter tang, but it would be no easier to see someone else swing the sword in his place. Worse, still, a thought comes unbidden— Shiro trying to do it himself to spare anyone else the task, slow and messy.

“Whoa, you can’t be serious!” Lance screeches, a hand going to rest on the hilt of his sword. “Keith, you’re supposed to _protect_ Shiro, not turn your blade on him! And what if you _missed?_ Gods, I’m not going to just stand here—”

“Lance, please,” Shiro interrupts, his voice soft. “I’d rather lose an arm than be a danger—”

“Lose an arm and die of infection,” Hunk says, snippy and short with the prince. “Can you two calm down for five minutes? Let cooler heads prevail, here?”

“Please,” Pidge seconds, sighing as she pushes her unruly bangs out of her eyes. “Let’s not rush into this. We’re dealing with dark and unfamiliar magic here. I doubt the solution is as simple as _apply sword_.”

“Yes! Exactly! _Exactly_ ,” Lance says, leaping on that train of thought. “We all just saw how it reacted to a tiny prick from Pidge. What do you think will happen when you come at Shiro with a sword, intending to chop it in half? Or sever it from Shiro?”

“It has some sense of self-preservation,” Pidge agrees. “And we don’t know enough to take it apart. Yet,” she adds, a finger held up.

“Yet?” Keith asks. His arms are borderline draped around Shiro’s shoulders, with Shiro’s good hand fastened around his wrist for reassurance.

“I think, if we find this Altean energy Keith might be drawn to, we could find texts that can help. Help explain this, help us learn how to undo it. I mean, there _has_ to be a way. Oh, no, wait,” she says suddenly, looking crestfallen. “I’ve only read translated material…”

“Oh, I can do basic Altean translation,” Hunk pipes up. He shrugs, as if it’s anything but a rare and immensely valuable skill. “Thank my unrelentingly awful tutor for that one. Altean history and culture was like, his speciality when he was with the university.”

“Hunk!” Pidge exclaims as she bounces up on her feet, arms outstretched. “You’re amazing! Okay, so we keep following Keith to these Altean ruins, we search for ways to safely deconstruct or neutralize Shiro’s arm, and zero dismemberment happens between now and then. Are we all on the same page now? Keith? Shiro?”

Shiro sighs. “Absolutely. Provided nothing goes horribly awry—”

“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” Keith tells him, ruffling the hair at the top of his head. It’s fond and it’s teasing— Keith used to do it when Shiro spent long hours hunched over legal documents, nursing cold tea and groaning continuously for minutes.

“Right,” Shiro says dryly, a reluctant half-smile showing through as he tilts his head into Keith’s touch. “When has anything ever gone wrong for me?”

“Well, all I have to say is thank the gods we’re here,” Lance says, pinning Shiro and Keith with a disappointed-but-not-surprised look. “If it were just the two of you, you’d have hacked him to bits. And he’d have let you!”

Keith’s nostrils flare wide.

“We were, perhaps, a little bit premature,” Shiro says awkwardly, waving his good hand like he wishes he could dispel the whole conversation. He’s not entirely convinced— Keith can tell by the set of his shoulders and the minuscule movement of his tongue against the inside of his cheek, the reluctant look in his eye— but he’s willing to leave it for now.

As they settle in to bed down, Shiro makes sure he’s close to Keith, face-to-face, back to the low fire and body curled toward his knight. He tries to tuck his inhuman arm underneath him, to sleep with it pinned under his bulk, as if it’s all he can do to shield the rest of them from what it might do.

Keith reaches out and touches his fingertips to Shiro’s chest, bare where his shirt’s fallen open from lost buttons; the skin underneath is rough with scarring, and his fingers curl against the warmth of his flesh one by one. “You have to be uncomfortable, sleeping like that.”

Shiro shifts his head against the pack and rolled up pair of Keith’s breeches that serve as his pillow, cheek smushing harder against the fabric. “The alternative is you tying me up with Pidge’s whip.”

Keith grunts softly, not letting his eyes stray from Shiro for a second. He’s known this man so long— longer and better than he’s known anyone but his father, and even then, half those memories are obscured by the veil of childhood and time— and this… this is new. This broken distrust of himself. This strange hopelessness, when he used to relentlessly encourage Keith to do better, aim higher, dream greater.

It’s shocking— horrifying, disgusting, rage-inducing— what the Galra managed to rip out of him and sew back in.

He’s the man Keith swore himself to— a hundred times in his head and once on his knees, on the thick carpet of a royal antechamber with a halo of multicolored sunlight around him— but the vigilant somberness he carries around hurts Keith to see. He wears it like the armor he lacks, wariness curled around the prince like it will protect him where Keith failed to.

“Did you ever really think you would find a cure for your arm?” he asks in a fragile whisper. Because Keith senses that no, Shiro never had much hope in that, and the waxing silence is his answer. “You didn’t. But you didn’t want to go back, either.”

“It’s selfish of me,” Shiro admits. The desert silence is deafening, interrupted only by the occasional crackle of the fire and their own soft breathing. He shifts again, and the fingers of his left hand come close to Keith’s. “I feel like I’m on borrowed time, Keith. And I just wanted to spend whatever I have left with you.”

Keith’s jaw clicks and he knows he’ll have a headache tomorrow from grinding his teeth in his sleep. The sentiment twists knots inside of him, dread winding itself around the warm affection that sits coiled in his belly. “Well, you have a very long life ahead of you,” he nearly hisses, skin flaring with emotion-drawn heat, “so I hope you don’t get tired of my face anytime soon.”

Shiro smiles at that, an amused little noise slipping out through closed lips. Like he doesn’t believe it, but savors the idea. And Keith, so experienced in defeating outward threats to his prince, has no idea how to ward off Shiro’s own sense of doom.

“I’ve been thinking that after all of this, when it comes time for Pidge to break away, I’ll go with her,” Shiro murmurs. “It’s the most useful I could be, as I am. Maybe the Holts are still alive. Maybe she’ll even find them.”

“I’ll come with.” He makes a case before Shiro can interrupt to tell him— and to tell him what? That they should part? That Keith still has a future in service to the kingdom? He wants none of it without Shiro to make it worthwhile. “A larger party stands better odds, and I’m the best fighter among us. And besides, do you really think I’d let you go into enemy territory alone, Shiro? I swore an oath to protect you.”

“I can release you from that—”

“Don’t you _dare_.” Keith’s leans in close, nose almost brushing Shiro’s. “I’m not leaving your side. And I won’t let anything happen to you. Not again. I’ll do better, Shiro. I’ll be better.”

Shiro sighs, inadvertently blowing dirt into Keith’s face. He immediately sputters an apology, barely remembering to keep it hushed. “You’re everything I could ever ask for, Keith. And I know you’ll do right by me, even if the worst happens.”

“It won’t.” If he says it with enough resolution, maybe the heavens will hear and the gods will listen. Maybe they’ve tired of toying with him and Shiro. “Let me worry about it, okay? I’ll keep you safe. Trust me, Shiro.”

“I do trust you, life and limb,” Shiro tells him as they begin to drift. There’s the barest hint of a sleepy, shit-eating grin as he adds, “Keith. _Keith_. Life and _limb_.”

Keith groans long and low and closes his eyes, feeling worlds lighter as he slips into slumber.

 

* * *

 

Dawn comes again and Keith’s determination springs anew. Shiro is suffering and it clouds his thoughts, and Keith is nothing if not willing to help him traverse the dark.

They ride for another two days, in better straits now that they’ve had a few decent meals again. Keith points out desert hares and snakes when he spots them in the distance; Lance snipes them with ease, finding clean shots every time, and the rhythm they establish is surprisingly comfortable.

Their rations carry them as the terrain changes, plains giving way to hard, exposed bedrock and enormous stone formations. The riding is trickier as they slow to navigate stony steppes and deeply gouged earth, and Keith’s map is sparse on details now that they’ve moved beyond what passes for habitable land in the Ariz Wastes.

They find a handful of Altean remnants along the way, so weathered, overgrown, or buried that they’d easily be overlooked. Keith slowly takes his own notes, filling out more pages in his journal, while Hunk and Pidge excitedly chatter to each other about each discovery. The further they venture into the barren wilds, the less touched the land is. Even in ten-thousand years, few have tread this deeply with such purpose.

It shows in one of the Altean ruins Keith stumbles upon, unaware until they’re in thick of it. He slows Red to a stop as he cranes his head to peer up at the stony formations risen around them, all wrapped in dry, thorny vines.

“Keith,” Lance says tiredly when he has to guide his blue-grey mare around Red, “either keep moving or get off and piss already.”

“Look up,” he grunts, reaching over to bump the underside of Lance’s jaw and force his head upward.

“Keith! Wha— oh, wow…”

Surrounding them are pillars, so worn by time and wind that they nearly look natural. But hints of carving remain here and there, or inlaid tiles of colored stone and dulled metal; Keith’s eye is drawn to the roughly hewn shapes near the tops of several columns.

They’re lions, he surmises. Maybe once they’d been beautifully carved likenesses, etched in painstaking detail. Now the finer details have eroded, leaving just enough to suggest the glory of what once was.

“A shame,” Shiro sighs as he runs his hand along a column bearing one of the ferocious beasts, faded as it is. His brow knits as stone crumbles under his touch. “Altea was fond of lions as well.”

“The Altean royal line was strongly associated with them, just like the Shirogane clan,” Pidge supplies helpfully. “I suppose they are pretty regal.”

“Very,” Keith agrees, imagining Shiro in his old armor. Not the formal set, although that had its own appeal— silvery-white trimmed in patterned gold, gleaming, highly impractical but very fine to look at.

No, he preferred Shiro’s battle armor, enduring and well-loved. Missed helping him dress in it, breathing in the last of their spare time together before another battle. Leather-lined iron and gold silk ties, forged and lacquered dark to conceal the stains of blood and death. Sleeves of chain and rich brocade under shoulderguards and a chestplate arrayed in the proud and sinuous shapes of gilded Shirogane lions.

Shiro’s fanned helmet had been Keith’s favorite, the marker by which Keith could find him as battle grew chaotic. Beautifully shaped iron, marked with ornamental horns that invoked hints of a dragon; his neck guard backed with sumptuous white fur, hinting at a mane. The golden half-mask that fit snugly across the bottom of his face, bearing a lion’s furious snarl— and oh, how few things could send a shiver through Keith like the look of Shiro’s dark eyes burning under the shadow of his helm, his usual smile traded for intimidating fangs.

Keith tries to keep his thoughts on the present as he consults his map and fills in a record of this new discovery. They’re closer than ever to the thing that’s calling him, and he can feel the tug of it deep in his bones. They’ll need to stop and eat and rest the horses— and might as well do it here, he supposes— but they could be upon their desired destination as early as this evening.

The party reacts with scattered, tired cheers at the news. Hunk is only too happy to start sorting out a quick meal while Keith and Shiro lead the horses to a nearby basin filled with water.

“We’re so close,” Keith sighs, anticipation beginning to build at the back of his thoughts. He’s thrown very slightly off-balance as Shabrang shoulders past him to drink, and though he doesn’t need the extra support, Shiro still reaches out to steady him. “Thanks. How are you feeling?”

There’s a lengthy exhale and a moment of Shiro staring out across the basin and uneven earth, toward the looming haze of darkness beyond the Devil’s Divide. “Better,” he says as he turns and offers Keith a smile.

“Honestly?”

“Honest,” Shiro intones, dropping his cross-armed stance in favor of patting along Shabrang’s side. “I’ve been thinking about some of the words we’ve had over the last few days, and I do feel… better. Hopeful,” he adds, a little lilt in his voice that makes Keith’s heart swell.

“Shiro, I… that’s so good to hear.” The excitement he’d felt earlier rises into something like elation, airy with relief. “I meant it. Every word.”

Shiro ducks his head a little, but the smile doesn’t budge. “I believe you. In fact, I don’t know that there’s anything else I believe with as much certainty.”

Keith hardly knows what to say to that, but he’s grateful to be something steady and dependable for Shiro after the prince served him so long in the same regard.

“And… can I show you something?” Shiro asks, unduly timid. He lifts his constructed arm, taloned fingers gently curled before his empty palm. His expression shifts into one of deep concentration, thick eyebrows slowly drawing inward as he focuses— and suddenly that poisoned light spills into the runes and shimmers around the shape of his hand, as if summoned.

Keith startles back reflexively, but Shiro is still and poised. In control, the knight realizes, and not in pain. He watches as Shiro stretches out his fingers and rolls his wrist, giving him every opportunity to see the vibrantly violet-red energy lacing his arm. There’s a hum from it, so faint that it just barely tickles at Keith’s ears.

“I think I’m getting some control of it,” Shiro murmurs, sheepish as he looks to Keith. As he clenches his hand into a fist, the light abruptly fades and recedes back into his arm. “It only hurts for a moment. And it could be… useful.”

“It could,” Keith warily agrees, still tracking the little movements of the inhuman limb. He thinks of the Khopesh scorpion and how easily its chitinous exoskeleton had split and burned at Shiro’s touch, as if it were nothing more than a white-hot knife passing through a hardened crust of sugar.

It’s heartening, to some degree. At least to see Shiro more secure in himself and his agency.

“We could have answers, soon enough,” Keith says as they wander back toward the others with the horses in tow. “Or an idea of where to look for them. If nothing else, we’re charting territory that’s been skimped on. Lousy royal cartographers,” he says, and Shiro chuckles for it.

Keith’s steps feel light and airy at the sound, and for his part, Shiro looks at ease. The hunted look he’s worn for the last week isn’t so terribly apparent, and neither is the defeated hunch that had come over him.

“Oh! I made something for you,” Keith remembers, already fishing in one of the pouches that’s slung around his waist. He carefully unfolds it before presenting it to the prince. “It’s not very good, but I figure it’s better than nothing.”

“A glove?” Shiro asks as he gingerly lifts it from Keith’s palm.

“Snakeskin,” Keith nods, eyes darting to Shiro for some sign of approval. He’d prepped the skin and sewn it over the last two days during his late night watches by the fireside. “I figured you’d only need the one…”

There had only been enough usable skin for one glove, anyway. It’s funny how things work out just fine sometimes.

“Keith,” Shiro begins, almost a sigh. His smile is bright as he slips it on, careful not to nick the material with his metal claws. It fits snug over his hand, sleek and scaly black to help protect from scrapes and further callusing. “Keith, this is so thoughtful! And well-made. Thank you.”

Heat creeps up the back of his neck at the praise and Shiro’s soft, affectionate smile. “You’re welcome.”

“I couldn’t ask for a better knight. Or a better friend.” Shiro flexes his hand in the new glove, testing its give. His smile remains, but it goes soft and bittersweet. “I only wish I could do better by you.”

Keith grunts, annoyed Shiro would even say something like that. As if Keith isn’t forever in a life debt and paying him back as it is. As if Shiro isn’t the bright star that appeared and led him toward dawn, changing his life— for the better— forever.

“You’ve already done right by me. No one has been more of a friend to me than you, Shiro. No other lord is worth serving. And I think you would be a good king, too.” Keith doesn’t want Shiro to forget it. He can’t banish the doubts Shiro feels about himself, but he can at least ensure his own opinion on the matter is clear: Shiro is a good man with a good heart, and no matter what, Keith will stand by him.

Shiro’s eyes flutter shut, his mouth pulling to one side. “I think you might be biased.”

“I’m definitely biased,” Keith agrees, earning Shiro’s little huff of laughter. “But I’m still right.”

He’s not surprised when Shiro slips his arm around his shoulders and pulls him close while they walk. It’s the sweet, simple affection the prince has always craved, and Keith loves how easy it comes between them. He’s reminded of their hikes around the temples and estates they’d been hosted at during the northern campaign, hours spent bumping lazily into each others’ sides as Shiro complained about the stodgy local lords and pushback from his own generals.

“What I don’t understand,” Shiro says in the quiet before they rejoin Hunk, Pidge, and Lance, “is why they’d give me a weapon like this.”

Keith’s lost for a second, until he remembers the arm, the coursing magenta energy, the searing destruction it imparts. He doesn’t know any more than Shiro does. They’d abused Shiro, savaged him, _tortured_ him— so why would they give him a means to fight back?

“An experiment, maybe?” he croaks out, feeling that old churn of fury in his core.

Shiro pulls a face and without looking, Keith can tell his metal hand is clenched into a tight fist.

 

* * *

 

Keith checks his map twice more, with Hunk looking over his shoulder to corroborate their location.

They’re right. This is it. Keith knows it by more than just the paper in his hands or Hunk’s assurances that he’s seen documentation pointing to this location, too. He knows it by the tug at every fiber of him, stronger than ever before, calling him just a little bit further. It’s nearly enough to bring him down to his knees.

And yet, there’s nothing here to be found.

“Wow.” Lance whistles low as he turns his dappled blue-grey mare in a slow circle around them. “It’s nothing. Great job, Keith.”

The reins in Keith’s hands dig into his palms as he clenches them tight, frustration building up close to his internal breakpoint. He looks to Shiro, first and foremost, apology in his eyes. “I-I don’t understand, I… I feel it so strongly here. It’s— I’m so sorry, Shiro, for leading you astray.”

Shiro’s kind and patient and not the least bit upset as he dismounts Shabrang. “It’s okay, Keith. No need for apology. We’ll make camp and scout the area, and then decide on a course of action from there. Alright?”

Shiro’s smile helps put Keith somewhat at ease, though confusion and disappointment still work thickly through his veins. He’d pinned so much on this— too much, it seems— and to have it pan out into nothing is a blow that leaves Keith sombered. What has he been following all this time? What is he supposed to do with the feeling that still sits heavy in his chest and weighs down his bones?

He keeps quiet as they tether the horses near a patch of grazing land beside a small watering hole and begin setting up camp. He’s not sure what to say or where to go from here— with Shiro to help Pidge reach the empire, he supposes, if this is the end of their journey as a whole group.

Keith’s helping Hunk get the fire started when Lance bursts back into camp with a grand total of three twigs for firewood, all sweat-drenched skin and flailing limbs. The knight from the coast looks like he’s about to burst.

“I found it!” he gasps in between labored breaths. “ _Me_! I found it!” He pauses to draw in a wretched breath, doubling over with his hands on his knees. “Altean! Markings! Over there!”

“Keith! You were right,” Hunk exclaims, whapping him on the back in a celebratory gesture.

Lance squints at them, still hunched with his hands on either knee. “What? No, _I’m_ the one that found it.”

“Because Keith’s feeling led us here in the first place,” Hunk says slowly. “And my own academic knowledge supported it. You’re kind of bringing up the rear, here, buddy.”

“Whatever,” Lance grouses. He grabs Pidge’s hand to tug her to her feet, ignoring her startled cries as the artificer tools in her lap spill to the ground. “Shiro, Hunk, Keith, come on! Everybody, hurry!”

“Why are you so worked up?” Keith asks as they follow Lance in a loose trail.

“Because it— I _felt_ something when I saw it,” Lance huffs, like it ought to be obvious. The younger man winds his way through the stony outcroppings until they reach a cave, and at its entrance, he stands and points to the carvings that round its natural walls.

Keith’s the first to step in, with Shiro hovering close by his side. Lance, emboldened by the others’ presence, takes a deep breath and leads them further in.

The silence is strange and heavy, and Keith feels a sudden disconnect from the world outside. It’s as if they’ve stepped into another realm, where the dripping of water from stalactites resonates like a message and the earth around them seems to breathe. The air is thick with that magnetic energy Keith has felt for so long, and judging by the raised hair along the back of Shiro’s neck, he senses it, too.

“It kind of feels like something _wants_ us to be here, don’t you think?” Lance asks, a nervous laugh coming out in bits and pieces. “It’s sort of—”

There’s no cap to that thought as the ground under Lance’s feet opens and swallows him whole. There isn’t even time for Keith to react as the cave’s earthen floor continues to crumble, racing toward the four of them. He feels the solid stone give way under his heels, the cracks spreading further than any of them can outpace. There’s a breathless moment where his stomach sinks even as his heart flies into his throat, and as they begin to fall, all Keith can do is reach out and take hold of Shiro.

There’s no protecting him from the impact that waits below. No matter how Keith tries to angle his feet to catch at the smooth stone of the shaft they’re sliding down, they only continue to skid down into the dark abyss. So he holds onto Shiro and is held in return, the both of them desperate as they tumble deep into the earth and then freefall—

And land with a splash, dropped at an angle into water deep enough to cradle them from bone-cracking collision with bedrock.

It’s pitch black and Keith sucks in a panicked breath. Around him are the frightened cries and splashes of the others, but he’s worried first and foremost for Shiro.

“Shiro?!”

“Keith, I’m here.” The voice isn’t far, but it’s still further than Keith would like. “Sound off?”

Weak responses from Pidge, Hunk, and Lance answer back. Keith pushes himself in the direction of Shiro’s voice. He’s never been a strong swimmer, even after Shiro made it a priority after nearly losing Keith while they forded a rain-swollen river on campaign, but he manages to flounder his way close.

“I think this part is shallower,” Shiro says, grappling for him in the dark.

Keith follows close as the prince guides him through the cool darkness, sputtering when the water laps into his mouth. He can hear Lance and Hunk guiding Pidge in the same manner, though they’re some yards distant.

Eventually, Keith feels something firm underfoot again. When he rises, the water is only waist-deep, and then less than that, and then they’re standing on damp but solid earth. He falls to his knees, thighs trembling with strain and lingering fear from the fall.

Around them, the darkness vanishes in a slow crescendo. There are pale blue crystals embedded along the walls of what looks to be a massive, manmade chamber. Or Altean-made, rather. They hum as they flicker on and gradually brighten, casting the enormous space in unearthly light that can only be magical in nature.

“Uh, I think we found that Altean complex I was talking about,” Hunk says faintly.

“This is unbelievable,” Pidge says, breathy in awe.

It is. It’s worlds beyond anything Keith has ever come across before. It’s intact— or close to it, for there are sizeable cracks running along the walls and floors— and largely preserved from the ravages of time and weather. Gems still sparkle in recesses, bordered by etched patterns that twist and twine down the long hall that extends ahead of them, bathed in that ethereal blue glow. The columns here are wrapped in scrollwork and majestic lions, their eyes made of light-imbued crystal and their teeth like ivory.

“It’s… breathtaking,” Shiro agrees. His hair is plastered across his forehead, and the tatters of his shirt cling wetly to the curves of his torso. They’re all wet and all a mess, but it’s Shiro that Keith can’t stop staring at. “Keith, this is— this is what you were drawn to. How did you _know_?”

“I didn’t,” Keith breathes out. “I mean, I didn’t know it would be like this.”

He steps forward and touches one of the pillars, feeling down polished stone that still glitters in the unnatural light.

“I guess we ought to move forward, huh?” Lance asks, nervous as he cranes his neck down the long hall ahead.

They do, but warily. Keith and Lance lead, both of them nervous about just how little protection their prince is wearing. At Keith’s behest, Lance hands off his sword so that Shiro might have something to defend himself with, should his knights fail. Pidge and Hunk flank him, but they’re more absorbed in the sights around them, gasping over every new feature they pass.

The Altean ruins sprawl like a small city might. From the long hall, their wet footsteps lead them into a chamber with high vaulted ceilings, a small ballroom, rooms with winding staircases and statuary that dwarfs the greatest sculptures of modern Arus.

It isn’t all amazement and wonder, though. They pass rooms where the objects within float, frozen and unnatural, as if time itself has stopped; places where the air has a slight distortion, and Pidge is quick to stop anyone from stepping through and winding up in severed pieces.

Whether it’s magic gone awry or intentional booby-trapping, Keith can’t tell, but they hold their breaths as they pass rooms that make their skin prickle and their hair raise by proximity alone, and he fears that they’ll only find mysteries here instead of answers.

“Shiro,” Lance says as they enter a wide hall lined with columns and artistry. “Look, there’s some armor! We could see if it fits you.”

Keith sees what Lance means. Two suits of armor stand flanking the hallway, on display with the rest of the carven busts and gold-gilded murals. They’re white and gold and made for a being taller than Shiro, but not by much, and they can’t afford to be picky when the prince is stuck in a torn shirt and ripped riding breeches.

Lance is already standing in front of one, hands planted on his hips, sizing it up for Shiro. He steps in and starts feeling for the leather straps that must be binding it to the figure underneath, and that’s when Keith sees the flicker of blue-tinted light within the helm.

“Lance!” Hunk shouts first. He runs in with a small secondary mace, swinging hard just in time to thrash the armored construct as Lance scrambles backward.

Keith snarls as he draws his dagger. The way the thing moves is inhuman and bizarre, head and limbs able to twist at angles they can’t predict. With the long spear it wields, it manages to trip up Hunk and knock aside Lance’s quick arrows with a twirl.

Keith lunges in just as Pidge slings her whip hard enough to crack the air. It wraps round the armored figure’s knees, hobbling it and leaving it vulnerable for Keith to dart within reach and drive his dagger where a face ought to be. It cracks the crystal embedded in its head, causing the light that animates it to fade; it slumps like a marionette with cut strings, collapsing with a resounding and metallic rattle on the floor.

Keith’s barely taken a breath when he turns and sees the other armored construct’s head swivel toward Shiro, the milky blue light of its animus narrowing with lethal focus.

Shiro stands frozen, Lance’s sword falling loose from his hand; his jaw is slack and his eyes ripped wide with fear, though he barely seems to register the threat bearing down on him.

“Shiro!” he screams as he launches himself forward, jaw snapping to the point of tasting blood. His muscles burn as he throws every ounce of his will into getting there in time, into blocking the blow by any means necessary.

It only barely works. He’s able to meet this armored monstrosity’s overhead slash with his dagger, but the force required to keep it at bay means he has no avenue to strike back. It’s all he can do to keep the blade from falling on both of them, and it’s hard enough to focus on that with the soft, shuddering sounds of Shiro’s panicked breaths just behind him.

The bolt of an arrow hits the crystal at the center of the suit of armor’s face dead-on, striking it dead. The force bearing down on Keith suddenly relents, and he’s able to push the construct back until it topples over like the other one. It hits the floor with a clang that seems to knock Shiro from his painful reverie.

“Keith,” he gasps, a hand falling on Keith’s shoulder. “Keith, I’m sorry, I—”

“It’s okay,” Keith says, immediately turning back to the prince. He pockets his dagger and sweeps his hands up to cup along Shiro’s jaw, scanning worriedly for injury. Yet all he sees is Shiro wracked with fear and trembling from it, skin paled and gleaming with cold, panicked sweat, his chest heaving unevenly. “I’m here, Shiro. Are you okay?”

He isn’t, obviously. Keith pulls him in closer, until their chests touch, hoping the more regular rhythm of his own breaths will help Shiro’s even out. His touch slides higher, his thumbs stroking along either side of Shiro’s cheeks to try and soothe.

“I remembered…” He winces, lip pulling up and his eyes squeezing hard shut. “I remembered fighting something like that, and it— I don’t know what came over me. I couldn’t move.”

Keith runs a hand over Shiro’s furrowed brow, brushing back loose hair and smoothing out the furrows above the bridge of his nose.

They proceed onward with care, with Lance and Hunk taking the forward position to survey each new room before they enter. Keith is still wondering how they’re going to navigate a way back out when Lance pipes up, his voice warbling with fresh uncertainty.

“Uh, guys? You’re going to want to see this.”

The next darkened chamber slowly hums to life, the blue lights along the walls and ceiling growing brighter by the second. At its center, in the middle of a recessed stretch of floor, is an enormous crystal; it glitters multifaceted, and Keith is so lost in the splendor of it that he almost misses the young woman frozen within.

“Gods,” Hunk whispers, leaning in. “Is that— but it can’t be— I mean, is that an Altean?”

It’s hard to tell through the distortion of the crystal’s many uneven surfaces, but Keith can’t imagine who else it might be, here in what might be the last whole piece of Altea.

“There’s another back here,” Pidge says, waving an arm to draw them to another large crystal, although this one contains an older Altean with bright hair.

“Wow,” Lance breathes, so close his breath nearly fogs the crystalline surface. Thoughtlessly entranced, he presses his hands to the clear stone as he peers inward. “She’s _beautiful_.”

The crystal fractures at his touch. The first crack splits so sudden and wide that it sends the knights staggering backward. From there it shatters like a frozen pond underfoot, fissures forming like spiders’ webs, before it breaks into a million tiny glimmers that cascade musically across the dark floor.

Lance races forward to catch the Altean woman before she hits the ground, sending bright fragments of crystal clinking as they scatter under his boots.

Across the room, the crystal containing the other Altean does the same, fragmenting until the man inside is free to more or less collapse onto Pidge. Hunk helps Pidge carry the semi-conscious man closer to where Lance sits, still cradling the woman from the crystal.

She _is_ beautiful, Keith notes as she slowly comes to. Finely made features, smooth brown skin, and white, white hair that tumbles onto the floor like spilled clouds. Pointed ears and the strange markings under her eyes distinguish her as Altean. Her clothing is regal and elaborate, rich fabric dyed in shades of blue and white, trimmed with pink and sparkling gold. A few pieces of jewelry ring her arms— thick gold bands, some of them gemmed.

And when her eyes suddenly open with clarity, Keith can see her irises are a vibrant and clear blue with pink at their center.

“Who are you?” she asks in an affected accent, still hazy from the recent wake. Her look turns sharper as she takes in more of her current predicament. “Who are they? Why are you here? And what is wrong with your ears?”

Without waiting for an answer, the Altean slips from Lance’s loose hold and spins around with his arm in hand, twisting until he’s effectively pinned.

“Is this because of my ears?!” Lance screeches as she forces his face into the crystal strewn floor.

“Wait, please,” Shiro says, darting a step forward with his hands raised in a gesture of good intent. “Please, let Lance go. We mean no harm. We’re—”

“Your arm,” the Altean says, bright eyes narrowing dangerously. “Your arm _reeks_ of the Galra and their blood magic.”

“We know,” Pidge speaks up from behind her. The Altean man in her arms is beginning to stir, and Keith fears he’ll have the same knee-jerk reaction of panicked defense. “It was forced on him by the Galra. We came here to find a way to free him of it.”

That much seems to resonate with her. With a slightly pitying look, she releases Lance’s arm and helps him to his feet. “My apologies, then. If you are truly enemies of the Galra, then we might be allies,” she says with a wary hint of a smile.

“Yes, we are,” Shiro says, leaping at the chance for diplomacy. He hesitates. “Are you… Altean?”

“Of course. Forgive me for not introducing myself,” she says, color rising in her cheeks. “I am Princess Allura, daughter of— of Alfor,” she says, suddenly hitching on the name. “My father, King Alfor. Where is he?”

Keith feels the slow creep of dread as Allura looks past them into the dim hall, as if searching for others. She whirls to check the rest of the room and then staggers unevenly toward Pidge and the older Altean.

She falls to her knees at his side, the thick fabric of her dress bunching. “Coran! Are you alright, Coran?”

“Yes, Princess,” he groans as Pidge helps him to sit up, with Allura’s hands bracing him all the while. “Thank you, small… human?”

“Uh, yes. Pidge,” she supplies. “And allow me to introduce Prince Takashi Shirogane and Sers Keith, Hunk, and Lance, whom you met already. We hail from the Kingdom of Arus.”

“Arus,” Allura repeats, gently shaking her head. She squints under a furrowed brow, racking her mind for details she can’t possibly know. “I am not familiar with any kingdom called _Arus_. Is it terribly far?”

“Princess Allura,” Shiro says, gentle as he kneels down in front of her. “Arus is… very close. Just above us, in fact. Do you have any idea how long you were encased in that crystal?”

Allura’s puzzled look drifts from Shiro to Coran. There’s fear behind her eyes as she asks, “Coran? Why was I sealed away like that? And where is my father? He… he put me to sleep, but I don’t know why we are here. Why is it so _dark_? Where is everyone?”

“Princess,” Coran answers, shoulders sagging heavily. “Accompanying you to safety was the last thing King Alfor charged me with. In those last moments in the palace, he spirited us both as far as he could. He moved _mountains_ to hide and protect us.”

In the heavy, weighted silence that follows, Keith licks his lips.

“He’s gone, you mean,” Allura says after a few moments more. She runs trembling fingers under her eyes to wipe away quickly shed tears, and then cries no more. The princess looks back to Shiro, first, but her gaze trails over the rest of them, too. “Do you know of what happened while we were asleep? How long has it been?”

“Ten-thousand years.” Hunk tries to say it gently, but there’s no kind way to tell someone that everything they’ve ever loved or known is more or less dust.

“No,” Allura says weakly. Her small hand goes to clutch Coran’s, and the man himself is stunned into stillness.

“King Alfor was the last royal Altean we have record of,” Pidge adds. “He died when the Galra attacked Altea and razed the kingdom to the ground.”

“I see,” the princess says, slumping softly into her servant’s side. A second passes and she rallies again, looking to Shiro. “You recognized me as Altean. There must be more of my people, then?”

Shiro shakes his head slowly. “None that we’ve ever seen. Arus is comprised of territory that once belonged to Altea. Little survived the destruction, but there were enough ruins and bits of scattered writing that it wasn’t forgotten. But your people… none were spared, to my knowledge.”

“Zarkon,” she hisses sharply, and the name makes Shiro go rigid still. “ _He_ did this. And now his successors carry on the plague for him?”

“No,” Shiro softly whispers. “It’s still him. Zarkon.”

Allura’s shock wars with her disgust. “My father is dead, but that _beast_ lives ten millennia?”

With a few moments to collect herself, the princess tells them her memory of the fateful fall of Altea— the betrayal apparent as Galra soldiers burned their way across Altea’s green pastures, ravaged their armies with dragonfire, countered Altean defenses with dark magic of their own, twisted by blood and death. She recalled a world on fire before her father cast her asleep and sent her away, buying what time he could in the face of an imminent destruction.

Keith’s nails dig hard into the flesh of his bicep, and he thinks nothing of it until the pain eventually seeps through his anger and he realizes he broke the skin. Allura is only waking up to the first glimmers of the Galras’ cruelty to her people. Everyone knows but no one can say— and he supposes it’s not needed. She’ll see for herself in time.

Her whole civilization, wiped away by the hand of a tyrant. Her people, gone, and even the memory of their existence is weak. The very earth where Altea once stood proud is broken and sundered, the Devil’s Divide a hideous scar that marks the power and horror of what happened to the last kingdom to trust Daibazaal.

That alone is enough to make Keith’s heart burn and his limbs to ache with the feeling of useless fury. But it’s worse, even, knowing that this evil is what touched Shiro, too.

The sympathy on the prince’s face as Allura speaks of Zarkon and the Galra is not for nothing. When he flinches from her words, it’s because he knows too well what they’ve done and will do.

“I was his prisoner,” he tells Allura after she’s finished speaking. His mouth twists as the recollections return, and there’s sweat beaded along his forehead as his eyes close tight. “He’s vicious. Cruel. And obsessed with something lost from the time of Altea.”

“Voltron,” Allura says softly. She closes her eyes and breathes deep. “Of course. He doesn’t have it. My father must have hidden the armor and bayards with us.”

“That’s right, Princess,” Coran says as he slowly rises, pulling Allura up with him.

“Good. Very good,” she says as she straightens out her dress. She sniffs and wipes at her nose with the back of an elegant sleeve, and then heads for the door. “Come with me, paladins.”

Keith looks to Shiro, questioning. And he’s not the only one.

Shiro looks as stunned by the sudden turns of events as they are. He takes a few halting steps after Allura and Coran. “I suppose we follow…”

“I think she glossed over the part where you’re royalty, too,” Keith whispers to Shiro as they trail the Alteans down a series of winding steps.

“Sounds like the gods are giving Shiro exactly what he asked for,” Pidge gently teases.

“Yeah, now you’re getting ordered around like the rest of us.” Hunk snorts at the thought, but Shiro just frowns and levels his stare straight ahead.

“Hey, looking like that, Princess Allura can give me all the orders she wants—”

“Lance,” Shiro cuts in, looking back over his shoulder to cow the knight into behaving. “Careful.”

“Yeah,” Keith agrees, grinning. “She looked like she could’ve ripped your arm off earlier. I wonder what the Alteans consider fitting punishment for offering insult to royalty…”

“You’re all over-reacting,” Lance complains, crossing his arms. “She’s _definitely_ interested in me.”

“Oh gods,” Hunk mutters, just loud enough for Keith to hear. “This is Jenny Fairweather all over again.”

By the time they finish their descent and reach the chamber at the bottom, Coran and Allura are already waiting. They stand in the center of a small dais, and evenly spaced around the circular room are five sets of armor.

Keith lays eyes on them when he’s in between steps, and the sight makes him stumble. Each set is slightly different in color and features, but they were clearly forged by one armorsmith and common threads lace through each suit.

“My father created this armor and the weapons that accompany them,” Allura says as they wander close, each of them gravitating toward a color. “They were his masterworks, and he poured years of his life into forging them. The material came from the stars themselves, and my father imbued each set of armor with powerful Altean magic and alchemical secrets. They are truly legendary, and one warrior in this armor can turn the tide of battle. All five can shape a war.”

Shiro stands before the armor at the center of the array. It’s more black than anything else, accented in white and silver, and Keith knows he will cut an imposing figure atop Shabrang in it. The pauldrons are burly and wide, the chestplate thick and ornamented, and the helm is shaped into the open jaws of a roaring lion.

Keith is drawn to the armor just to the side of it. It’s red, red, red. A burnt crimson, with trim of gold and shocks of white woven through. Sleek and elegant in design. Its helm is a lion, too, but where Shiro’s is backed by a dense mane of black wolf fur, the red helm is topped with a plume of long, red horsehair that falls past the shoulder.

Keith smiles at that and reaches under his leathers to feel the pommel tassel from his old sword, comforted by the similarity.

Shiro’s soft laugh pulls him out of his admiring trance. The prince’s head is cocked and his smile knowing. “You know, I was going to commission you a new set of armor once you graduated, too, but I guess there’s no need. I don’t think anything of human-make could ever compare to this.”

“No,” Keith agrees as he runs a hand down the front of the red-plated chestpiece, fingers lingering on the strange Altean symbols embossed across its front.

It takes time to change into their new armor. Coran provides them with new underclothes and padding, and Keith is welcome of it. His own attire is worn and filthy with dust and dried sweat, and Shiro’s is beyond tattered. They’re given basins of water to clean up in before re-dressing, and Keith is grateful for that, too.

As Keith fits on the new Altean armor, he marvels at its construction. Whatever it’s forged from, it’s _light_. Light but solid and impossibly strong. He has the flexibility of his simple leather armor and the protection of the heavy iron plate he’d worn while serving at Shiro’s side. As he tests his range of mobility with a few swings of his dagger, he wonders at how he ever fought in anything less.

And _Shiro_ , gods.

Shiro is a vision in black. The Altean armor further accentuates his powerful shape, framing broad shoulders in heavy pauldrons but tapering to cover his slender waist in glimmering chainmail. It hangs down to his knees in a protective skirting, front and back, slitted high over his thighs so it isn’t restrictive in the slightest. His gauntlet is dark and sleek on the one hand he wears it; the other he leaves off, exposing his Galra arm for combat.

“I suppose this suits me better, now,” Shiro says when he catches Keith staring. It does, in many ways, match the darkness of his prosthetic arm.

Keith eyes him up and down, and then nods slow. “It looks good on you,” he says, eyebrows lifting.

Shiro lowers his head to hide the smile he’s surely wearing. “Yours looks good, too. Red suits you so well. Always has.”

Keith is still grinning when he notices the prince blanche, his own smile slipping into an open-lipped frown. “Shiro? Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Shiro says, though he doesn’t look well. He turns to get Allura’s attention. “Princess, if you have a moment…”

Allura manages to be bright-eyed and smiling when she approaches, despite the heaviness of… well, everything, that currently weighs on her. She claps her hands together excitedly at the sight of the two of them fully dressed. “Yes, Prince Shiro?”

“Is this… blood?” He turns to show her a dark and peeling stain across the black armor, stuck in the plates along his ribs and the inside of his left arm. It flakes at the touch and falls to the floor in flecks that look like rust.

Allura’s expression falls. “I— yes, it would appear— there was some… difficulty, in removing the black armor from its previous paladin. I suppose everything fell apart so quickly afterward that there wasn’t much time to properly clean it.”

“Did the previous black paladin die in this armor?” Keith asks. It’s a sobering thought— what could’ve killed someone wearing such unparalleled protection? “Does it have a weakness that Shiro should be aware of?”

“No,” Allura says firmly, shaking her head. “You need not fear any fault in my father’s armor. But… yes, the previous paladin died while wearing it. However, the circumstances were unnatural in the extreme.”

“Highly reassuring,” Shiro mutters as Allura leaves to answer a question for Lance, though it’s likely just a ploy for the knight to speak with her.

“I’ll help you get it all off as soon as we have some downtime,” Keith promises. “It’ll be like new.”

First, they need to ask Allura about Shiro’s arm. They’d come seeking answers in dusty tomes but had found two living, breathing Alteans instead— a boon from the gods, a fix for Shiro’s predicament handed to them on a silver platter.

“Not that I’m ungrateful,” Pidge says a few minutes later. She’s dressed in the green armor, which is apparently enchanted to camouflage its wearer regardless of the environment. “But why are you giving us this armor?”

“Because this world needs the paladins of Voltron,” Allura says, as if it is indisputable fact, “and you are clearly meant to fill this role. The good of the whole world may depend on you five.”

They watch as she opens a chest carried in Coran’s arms, revealing a velvety lined interior containing four oddly shaped pieces of forgework.

“What about you, Princess? Don’t you want a suit of armor?” Lance asks.

“I don’t need it,” Allura says almost gingerly. She smiles at them, but there’s a hint of something slightly condescending about it. Keith’s good at noting that.

“Why’s that?” he asks.

“Because I am highly skilled in the use of magic. I can conjure my own barriers, thank you, and so can Coran.”

“Oh, Princess Allura has a great deal more talent and capability than I do,” the older man inserts. “But I’ll not be underestimated! Why, once I managed to cast a seal of sealing so powerful, I couldn’t leave my room for three days! The door simply would not budge. Alfor himself had to come and undo it.”

“Yes,” Allura says after a moment. “At any rate, I am more than capable of protecting myself, if pressed. You all, however, seem weaker than even the average Altean…”

Keith presses his lips together tight as Allura gently lifts the first of four objects from the chest.

“And that is why I will also bestow each of you with this. These are the Voltron bayards. They were forged at the same time as the paladin armor, and each one is bound to the suits you wear. They take shape based on their user’s quintessence— their spirit, their life essence— but each one also carries its own unique traits.”

She hands them to each of the paladins in turn, only stopping short with Shiro. “As we previously touched upon, there were… difficulties in recovering the black paladin and his armor. I am afraid the bayard was lost ages ago, Prince Shiro.”

He accepts that with a sad but understanding smile. “I can make do without it. The arm the Galra gave me is good for that much, I suppose.”

“Yes,” Allura muses, staring thoughtfully down at Shiro’s right arm. “Pidge said it was forced upon you?”

“A year ago, I was taken prisoner by the Galra. They came onto Arusian land with a monstrous beast brought to heel, slaying or capturing every one of us. They threw me into their arena to fight for sport, and somewhere along the way, they decided to replace my arm with this abomination. I survived long enough to escape, though I can’t remember how,” Shiro explains, and it’s the first that Keith has heard Shiro put his ordeal into so many words, laid so cut and dry. _Forced to fight for sport._ “That’s all I know.”

Allura’s mouth draws tight. “I am so sorry, Prince Shiro. Truly, the Galra have no value for life and no honor to speak of. May I see your arm?”

Shiro stands stiff as Allura examines it from fingertip to the scarred fusion around his bicep. Keith and Lance have to undo the leather bindings of Shiro’s pauldron to give the princess the access she needs, and even then Allura seems puzzled by what she sees.

“This is… not right,” she mutters at last, one hand covering her mouth as her gaze rakes once more down the metal plates and their core of darkness and fluorescent energy. “Blood magic alone is terrible enough, but this is some bastardization of Altean technique, and I do not understand _how_. The Galra should not have been able to do this to you.”

Shiro’s brows lift high. “Well, they certainly managed.”

“Can you undo it?” Keith asks, leaning in closer.

Allura sighs. “There is a _powerful_ blood curse woven into this animus. That much is a Galra hallmark. Attempting to remove the arm or unravel the magic itself could result in a catastrophic rebound.”

“So, in other words,” Lance says with a pointed look at Keith and Shiro, “trying to slice it off would be a _bad_ idea? Maybe even a terrible one?”

“Yes, Lance, I would think that goes without saying,” Allura huffs. “It could quite possibly kill Shiro _and_ whoever struck it with enough force to trigger the curse.”

Lance smiles smugly and gives the both of them a smart little shrug.

“So what are our options here?” Keith tries instead. “Is Shiro just stuck with it? Can you at least check and make sure it’s not hurting him?”

“I do have some concerns,” Allura states. “This arm has been bonded to Shiro’s quintessence, to his mind. Interwoven like this, it is very nearly inextricable. To remove it now would be risky, even without the curse to contend with. But, if you have been able to use it thus far without incident…”

“There’s been a little bit of an incident,” Shiro says weakly. “But I think I’m improving. Getting some control of it, maybe.”

He demonstrates by pouring light and energy into the runes across his arm, drawing the magenta aura until it hums across the surface of the metal with lethal intensity. And with a twitch of his finger, it vanishes as quickly.

“Eerie,” Allura comments, and Keith has to agree.

But Shiro is doing better than he was three days ago, and Keith is more than willing to take that in lieu of chasing a path that could endanger Shiro further.

“We got answers, at least,” Keith shrugs. “Some of them, anyway.”

“Some,” Shiro agrees, nodding. He’s a bit more confident. It comes with having some clarity on where he stands and what he’s been through, Keith figures.

Lance holds up his bayard, closing his eyes and focusing on summoning it, as Allura explained when she handed them out. There’s a burst of light that reminds Keith of Shiro’s arm— only this is tinted a cool white rather than the ominous warmth of Galra magic— and suddenly a longbow appears in his hands, elegant and strong.

Hunk has a massive warhammer that he struggles at first to lift; Pidge’s come to life as a wedge-shaped blade with a whiplike cord affixed.

Keith closes his eyes and pours his will into the bayard in his hands, feels it grow hot to the touch—

And then when he opens them, it’s an angular broadsword, not terribly unlike the one Shiro had given him. Speartipped and solid, Keith gives it a few swings and thrusts and finds he likes the balance of it, though the grip will take some getting used to. It comes with a shield of hard light, too, that he can form at will.

Shiro whistles low as Keith dismisses the sword and his bayard reverts into a simple handle shape. “Not too bad, huh?”

“Nah, not bad at all.” He pulls out the braid of horsehair he saved from his old sword and ties the length of it around the bayard, giving it a gentle tug to make sure it’s fixed in place. “And now it’s perfect.”

Shiro smiles to himself and laughs, low and well-pleased.

 

* * *

 

They eat, even though Keith is wary of the food Coran claims is still edible. Regardless of how advanced the Alteans were, it really shouldn’t be possible for them to keep meat and cheese and fresh-picked vegetables in good condition for ten-thousand years, but…

The evidence is in front of them. The preparation and flavoring is odd, but it’s filling and satisfies a deep longing for a homestyle meal after so much travel.

Coran, Pidge, and Hunk occupy one side of the table, boisterous as they discuss magic, alchemy, and Altean engineering. Shiro is seated to the right of Allura’s seat at the head of the table, and they’re so deep in conversation about the complex’s defenses and their combined knowledge of the Galra that Keith has no choice but to endure Lance’s endless prattling about Allura’s hair, and her eyes, and how long her eyelashes are.

“Shiro’s are longer,” he says at one point, having had his fill of both the tasty but unidentifiable meat on his plate and Lance’s smitten chit-chat.

“Look, I’m not saying Shiro isn’t handsome. Beautiful, even,” Lance agrees. He props his elbow up and stares at Allura, seated at the head of the table, and sighs. “But there’s just something _about her_.”

“What is it with you and royalty?” Keith asks, his nose wrinkling. “Do you just pine after every prince or princess you see?”

“So I admire people who are beautiful and poised,” Lance hisses, his mood soured. He shoves a spoonful of diced vegetables into his mouth and swallows it down with minimal chewing. “So I’m a romantic. So what? Duel me if you’re so mad about it.”

“You’d die,” Keith says dryly, taking a long drink while Lance sputters. “You know they don’t marry down, right? They wed to secure alliances and consolidate power. Practical reasons.”

A year ago, Shiro’d had a bevy of willing Arusian nobles eager to wed him, if the Shirogane clan wanted to strengthen ties within their own borders. And there were princes and princesses from a dozen countries to the north and across the sea willing to seal an alliance with marriage. There’d nearly been a betrothal, at a point.

“Hey, _my_ family’s good enough to wed into royalty,” Lance snaps. “My great-great-great uncle married into the Shirogane clan, thank you.”

“Which branch of the family, though?” Keith asks as he continues to nurse his drink. When Lance remains silent, his lips curled inward, Keith nods. Definitely not the ruling one. “That’s what I thought.”

There’s quiet between them for some time, and then Lance speaks again. “You don’t think Shiro and Allura would— I mean, they wouldn’t just marry because they’re both eligible and royal and attractive and good… would they?”

Keith sets down his cup and angles himself in his seat. He leans in toward Lance just a hair, and then a little more. He knows Shiro is engrossed and unaware of what his knights are discussing, but Keith is still unenthused about being overheard. “I don’t know. Maybe? Allura has no people or kingdom left, but she does carry the secrets of Altea. If Arus were to become the new center of magical learning, like Altea was before…”

Lance’s expression falls anew. “Yeah. And Shiro’s so big… so strong… so noble. How am I supposed to compete with that?”

Keith sighs as he watches Allura laugh at something Shiro says, her eyes sparkling with good humor. He thinks of dinners when the palace hosted foreign visitors like Prince Adam, and how Shiro would stay and drink with the other prince long after Keith excused himself to bed, eyes bright despite all the wine and sake. “You don’t.”

He can feel Lance eyeing him, but he’d rather stare blankly ahead at Pidge.

“You know, you’re much more supportive of Shiro,” Lance complains as he pushes his plate away so he can lay his face directly onto the table.

As they finish up, Shiro asks Allura about a way back to the surface to gather their horses. There’s no sky to read, but Keith imagines it’s close to nightfall by now, and he hopes the animals have fared well while they’ve been gone.

Allura contends that this complex used to tower into the sky, before her father apparently buried it in a final act meant to protect her and the Voltron armor. They can ride a lift upward to the observatory— now probably close to surface level— and should any stone lie in the way, she will remove it.

Keith blinks at the easy way she says it, truthfully a little wary of her power.

They’ve only just left the dining room when there’s a faint tremble along the walls that gives Keith pause. Halfway down a long hall, a series of crystalline torches flicker red.

“Intruders,” Coran says at once. He and Allura look at the humans, as if questioning their involvement.

“No one we’d know,” Lance says, already drawing his bayard to summon his longbow.

Beside him, Keith can feel Shiro freeze, and he’s reminded of the incident with the armored constructs. “They found me,” the prince whispers.

There is a thundering explosion in a chamber ahead. Keith almost recognizes it as one they might’ve passed through on their way in. Sword drawn, he and the others race forward, only to stop at the threshold and watch as chunks of the ceiling rain down; they crush the floor where they land, destroying the tiled mosaic that had depicted fields of blue flowers, and shake the ground below their feet.

It eventually halts, and through the hole in the vaulted ceiling, Keith catches a glimpse of something that makes his blood run cold. It disappears before he can be certain, but the pieces he saw stick in his brain: jaws large enough to crush a horse, scaled skin, and that same sickening fuschia light that Shiro carries in his arm.

Whatever it is recedes, and in its place come figures that bear more of a passing resemblance to human.

Keith had only ever heard stories of the Galra from the matron at the orphanage or other children on the streets. For whatever reason, though they lived within sight of the Galra Empire, his father had never tried to convince him that Galra could sneak into their shack and steal misbehaving children back to Daibazaal. No, Keith had only heard that once he’d reached the capital.

And only then had he been able to build a picture of what Galra were: people more beast than rational being; furred, scaled, fanged; giant, more often than not, and accustomed to the taste of humans. They were vicious and bloodthirsty and cared for nothing but destruction.

Now Keith is seeing them for the first time, real and true.

A dozen Galra descend into the chamber, unfazed by the hundred-foot drop. They’re rigid and slim, strange in the nature of their movements, and as they move Keith can see glimpses of that almost-fluorescent Galra magic peek through the gaps in their armor.

Two more Galra descend well after the others. The larger of the two simply leaps down, landing solid on the already ruined floor; the other rappels down a length of rope, and then drops the last ten feet or so, nimble on his feet.

“Galra,” Allura hisses on his other side. “No doubt after my father’s armor. Paladins, it is imperative that not a single one of you falls into Zarkon’s hands— he would strip my father’s work from you and outfit his own warlords in it.”

“Yes, Princess,” Lance chirps quickly.

They’re well outnumbered, and that’s not even counting the dragon— an actual _dragon_ , if his eyes are to be believed— that he suspects is waiting up above.

Keith bristles as the enormous Galra— a commander of some kind— comes forward. Still out of range of a solid bowshot, but close enough that they can see and know him. Tall and broad, he wears dark armor cut with red and yellow. His left arm is an oversized monstrosity of metal made wicked and cruel, connected to the joint of his shoulder with a bright band of Galra magic; it is lined in glowing symbols, akin to Shiro’s. Light violet fur coats him, tufted around batlike ears, and when he speaks, there are flashes of sizeable fangs.

“I am Warlord Sendak. I come on behalf of Emperor Zarkon, supreme ruler of Daibazaal and the Galra Empire, seeking our escaped _prince_ ,” the Galra rumbles, vicious amusement hanging on the word, “but I seem to have found an even greater prize. _Alteans_. How unexpected.”

“Despite your best efforts to slaughter my people and scrape every trace of our existence away, enough of us yet live to be your undoing,” the princess challenges, shivering in her fury and defiance of the warlord. There is a fierce light behind her eyes, saturating the blues and pinks of her irises to a startling degree.

Sendak regards her coldly, languid as he descends another few steps from the ruined dais at the far edge of the large chamber. “Emperor Zarkon himself led the Altean extermination, as he trusted no one else to be sufficiently… thorough.” He smiles at her, brief and bare in his dark humor. “But it would appear that even ascended emperors can overlook some small details.”

“I will see him dethroned and executed for his crimes against Altea,” Allura asserts, her hands knotting into shaking fists. “The paladins of Voltron are returned, greater than they _ever_ were before, and we will bring your empire to its knees without mercy.”

“So fierce,” Sendak rumbles. His right eye is some magical prosthetic, blazing orange in its socket, and it narrows in interest. “If King Alfor had shared your spirit, perhaps Altea would not have bent and broken so easily.”

Pidge and Lance both lay hands on Allura, offering what bare comfort they can as furious and pained tears well along her eyelashes, wetting them even as she refuses to break eye contact with the Galra currently sullying her people’s last sanctuary. With a gesture, she creates a shimmering barrier in front of herself and the paladins, suspended to keep the Galra forces at bay.

Sendak only smiles.

“And ah, our _Champion_. How the arena misses you. The fights have grown stale in your absence, no matter how much blood spills.” His gaze roves down Shiro’s black-plated body, and Keith hates the appreciation in it, the ominous look of interest. “And if my emperor and High Priestess Haggar wanted you before, then they’ll be thrice as pleased to have you now.”

Keith can sense the quickening of Shiro’s pulse, the furious and shaky quality to every breath. There’s no hesitance as that cursed arm of his hums to life, so bright with focused energy that it’s painful to look on.

“I see you’ve broken the seal on your arm,” Sendak notes, head tilting. He flexes his own prosthetic— so much larger and more fearsome, made with undiscerning destruction in mind— and studies his own hooked claws. “It is unfortunate that the druids gave you something so… plain. You deserved more.”

Shiro seizes like he’s been stricken. “After you and your people cursed me with this arm—”

“Cursed you?” Sendak echoes back, heated disbelief on his tongue. “Reconsider, Champion. That arm was a reward, and one you fought for with earnest. Many a gladiator died in the hope of earning such a gift. Many by your hand.”

The prince staggers a half-step before shaking off the words. “And your arm?”

“A reward as well, though I earned mine on the battlefield— not as _entertainment_ ,” Sendak clarifies with a proud shake of his thickly-maned head. “Though I will admit, you were something to behold down there on the sands. You should have been born a Galra.”

The tension that grips Shiro is nearly visible, like the shimmer of heat off of hard-packed desert. The suggestion alone pales him— that he could be likened to them, his torturers. That he could have any place in the ranks of the people who tormented him so.

“I’d thought you would run deeper into your kingdom,” Sendak says, edging another step closer. “I was looking forward to a hunt, but here you are, a mere stone’s throw from the empire. Could it be you wanted to return?”

Keith feels something in his jaw come close to cracking. He can’t fathom what Shiro’s feeling as he hears this, and it takes every measure of self-control Keith has not to push through Allura’s barrier and run Sendak down himself.

“Or is it that Arus doesn’t want you anymore, broken and reformed as you are?” the Galra warlord pries.

“Be silent, you _monster_ ,” Allura shouts, but Sendak takes no heed.

“You’re better than arena fodder, Champion,” he says, and it could almost be mistaken for sympathetic. “You could rise to greatness within the Galra Empire, under the right command. There is no sense in continuing to align yourself with a doomed kingdom that has forsaken you.”

“Doomed?” asks a voice far to Keith’s right, small and wavering. It’s Lance, his taut bowstring loosening a fraction.

“As soon as Emperor Zarkon finishes conquering in the east, the eyes of the empire will turn here.” Sendak looks squarely at Shiro, his grin utterly rending. “If your people have even half your bloodlust, it should at least make for an interesting diversion.”

“I won’t allow it,” Shiro says, voice steeled even as his shoulders heave under his armor, breathing bordering on frantic.

“I am willing to deal with you, Champion,” Sendak says, his fearsome head cocking to one side. “You care for your companions. A weakness, but I will indulge you this once. I am true to my word— if you come with me, your Arusian knights will be spared.”

But not Allura or Coran. Keith quails to think of what sort of agony Zarkon would put them through.

Shiro grunts dismissively, not even considering the thought for a moment. Even if true, it was a paltry promise. “And what of my kingdom?”

“Emperor Zarkon has taken note of it,” Sendak says, as if that alone seals Arus’ fate. “It will be made to serve the empire, as all things must. I hope he charges me with the campaign for for your kingdom, Champion. It would be a small jewel in the breastplate of any conqueror worth his blood and salt… but a pretty one to have, nonetheless.”

Keith doesn’t like the look that follows, appraising Shiro like chattel. Like a prize to be taken. _And you, too,_ it says. He wants Arus and its prince, one way or another, and Keith has no doubt that he would ruin them both.

“So the Galra can poison our homeland, too,” Shiro snaps. “Foul the water and bruise the skies, choke the ground with the dead. Haven’t you done enough?”

Sendak exhales through his nose, heavy and thoughtful. “I do what I must for the empire, and no less. But I am not unreasonable, Champion. I hope you remember that much from your stay in Daibazaal?”

“My imprisonment, you mean. My _torture_ ,” Shiro snarls. “You watched while they made sport of me and a hundred others, and you expect me to serve you? I would sooner die.”

Sendak lifts his chin. “A waste,” he sighs, “but I am amenable to that, too.”

The battle begins in a blur. Keith never hears or sees Sendak give the command, but the dozen Galra foot soldiers surge forward in unison, wickedly curved swords drawn and ready. Even their sprint is unsettlingly uniform, and they are yet more ominous when underlit by the unnatural glow that seeps between the pieces of their armor.

Lance manages to pierce a few of them with his bayard’s arrows, but it doesn’t halt their charge; even shots that pierce the throat have little effect. “Uh, Shiro? Keith? Someone?”

There’s another rumble suddenly, and this one is louder and more encompassing than the initial breach of the building. It’s the integrity of the complex giving way, Keith realizes as a fracture suddenly appears in the wall behind him, widening from a narrow line into a hand-wide gap. High above, the supports across the ceiling buckle and groan, and far distant, Keith can hear the sounds of collapse.

“Allura, Coran, run to the lift and make sure the way to the surface is clear. We need to get out of here,” Shiro orders, slipping into the collected calm he wears so well in battle. “We’ll hold them here until we know it’s ready.”

Allura’s barrier falls as the pair retreat down the hall toward their only hope of escape, Keith braces for impact from the surge of oncoming Galra warriors. He summons his shield and sticks close to Shiro’s side, mindful of the man’s rattled breaths and the uncertainty in his usually flawless form.

“I’m with you, Shiro,” he promises in the moment before the Galra foot soldiers are upon them, sharing with Shiro one brief look of reassurance.

Keith swings high and hard, driving his sword through the helm of the first soldier in arm’s reach, carving metal and skull alike. He expects the splatter of gore and the spray of wet blood across his blade, but finds neither. The armored Galra collapses at his feet, but nothing spills from its split head or pools under its body; what Keith can see of the body inside the armor is dry and withered, lifeless but for the baleful light that slowly fades and flickers out.

“They’re undead!” he hears Pidge shout, apparently reaching the same conclusion. “Revenants! More blood magic.”

She grunts loudly while assisting Lance in fending off some of the straggling soldiers, and Hunk makes no bones about outright crushing the Galra revenants with his Warhammer, though he’s screaming all the while.

And Shiro is almost himself again. He has no bayard, no sword— only his hand, lit to a blindingly brilliant point of heat and light that shears through armor and dead bone, leaving their enemies in seared and severed pieces.

The relief of seeing his prince in fighting form is cut short as a sound draws Keith’s attention. It’s like the whir of a storm on the horizon, the howl of wind beating along the walls of his desert shack while his father curls around him and promises that everything will be okay. It rises in the air with such speed and velocity that a shudder courses down Keith’s spine.

A moment later, an enormous metal fist lands just inches from Shiro, crushing the undead Galra soldier he’d been fighting. Sendak apparently has no qualms about going through his own to try and rake his claws through Shiro. The prince leaps back, stunned, but the hand— Sendak’s hand, connected to him by a sizzling band of Galra magic— launches itself forward again.

It’s all Shiro can do to dodge Sendak’s metal talons. He rolls, spins, flips, the lightness of the paladin armor allowing him to use his acrobatic skill in full. When Sendak’s sharp-tipped fingers nearly close around him, the prince grits his teeth and fights the crushing force, as if prying the jaws of a dragon open.

Keith ducks under the slash of a revenant before lunging up to drive his bayard through the protective nosepiece of its helmet, caving the skull where a face ought to be. The fuschia light of Galra magic crackles around his sword, and then the undead soldier slumps back, sliding cleanly off of his blade.

As much as he’d like to take a run at Sendak directly, Keith is more concerned by the skid of Shiro’s feet as he grapples with the Galra warlord’s massive metal fist. Without another thought, Keith charges in and strikes at the fuzzy, crackling light that connects the constructed arm to the massive Galra across the room.

The second his sword makes contact, Keith feels the concentrated energy rebuff the blow; it lifts his hair and dances across his skin like lightning roves over the plains, and a heartbeat later he’s thrown back, barely managing to roll back onto his feet in time to counter another revenant soldier.

“Shiro!”

It’s not Keith screaming his name, for once. It’s Lance, desperately trying to distract Sendak with a flurry of summoned arrows, which the warlord shrugs away with ease.

The vicious Galra looks _welcoming_ as Shiro races toward him with his arm alight and his shoulders lowered. Grinning, wild, like this is exactly what he’d hoped to draw out of them. Or the prince, at least.

Shiro’s so focused on the warlord himself that he doesn’t see the whipcord swing of the oversized metal arm until it hits him sidelong and sends him crashing across the floor. It doesn’t stop him, though— he’s tumbling, and then on his feet, and then deftly dodging clawed swipes as he resumes his charge toward Sendak.

“Ah, that’s the Champion I remember!” Keith hears Sendak laugh from across the chamber.

He and Shiro duel while the rest of the paladins finish off the undead foot soldiers. The ruins around them shudder again, and Keith sees dust and pieces of the ceiling rain down anew.

“We have to get Shiro and go,” Hunk says. Down the hall behind them, Coran is beckoning them back— Allura is nearly done carving a path out to the surface, and the ancient remains of this complex are too compromised to last much longer.

“Back me up,” Keith says as he sprints toward the grudge match unfolding at the center of the room.

Sendak’s massive arm crushes the chunks of fallen ceiling it collides with and tears gouges into the tiled floor. It sends Shiro flying, and it’s only thanks to honed reflexes that the prince manages to evade the piercing twists of those metal talons, intended to gut him through and toy with his insides.

The warlord’s collapsed focus allows Keith to get in close, almost unnoticed. He leaps on the final approach, trying to gain the height he needs to drive the tip of his sword into the bared portion of Sendak’s fur-lined neck, aiming for the thickly muscled juncture where his shoulder slopes.

The Galra turns just in time to block him, his right hand formidable in its own right, and snarls down at Keith. His mouth opens wide, glinting fangs exposed, but whatever words he means to say are lost as a stinging arrow passes close enough to cut him across the cheek. Enraged, he throws Keith backward until he’s sprawled across the uneven floor, a chunk of stone digging into the red paladin’s back, and turns his focus to Shiro.

“Shiro!” Keith calls, voice hoarse. He can feel the tremor that passes under him, and beams supporting the ceiling begin to squeal as a webbing of cracks spreads from the massive hole that the Galra tore open. “We need to leave! Now!”

Across the room, Shiro fends off another attack from Sendak, whole body taut as the sheer force has him sliding backward some twenty feet. He narrowly misses the crushing impact of an enormous chandelier as another section of ceiling crumbles, and for a moment he and Sendak are both lost in the cloud of rising dust cast around the room.

“Shiro! _Fuck_.” Keith pulls himself up from the floor and rushes in, but not before shouting back over his shoulder, “Start heading there without us! I’ll bring Shiro back with me!”

The sifting dust that fills the air stings at his eyes and lungs, and Keith races half-blind in the direction of clashing metal and the hum of Galra magic. At the first sound of a now-familiar roar, Keith drops to the ground so quickly that the air is forced from his lungs; he waits while Sendak’s arcing arm swings overhead, close enough for the disturbed air to ruffle down the back of Keith’s neck, and then he’s up and moving again.

“Shiro!” he calls, pulse singing in his throat, relying on the sounds of Shiro’s grunts and half-screams to guide him.

There is a gap in the haze of dust, and Keith finds himself a short length from the dragging fight between Shiro and Sendak. The Galra’s back is to Keith, Sendak entirely unaware of him as he prowls toward the prince, the hunch of his massive shoulders predatory.

Distant, Keith hears the screams of Lance and the others. He wastes no time in closing the gap, this time taking his aim lower.

The tip of his sword finds a slender gap under the back of Sendak’s chestpiece, though he has to pour all of his strength into forcing the blade through chainmail-topped leather, thick skin, hard muscle. It sinks in just to the left of the warlord’s spine, between the backs of his ribs, and Keith doesn’t stop until he meets the solid resistance of the front of Sendak’s chestplate at its tip.

He withdraws before Sendak can turn on him, snarling as he wraps his natural arm around his middle to try and reach the wound and stem the bleeding. The bayard’s blade is a true red now, and Galra blood seems brighter than what humans shed.

“Devious _wretch_ ,” Sendak snarls even as he stumbles to one knee, breathing hard. Blood runs down the joints and seams of his armor, pooling darkly in the layer of dust that’s settled over everything. “You let him fight your battles for you, Champion?”

“Shiro, leave him!” he begs as the prince approaches. A shift in the earth makes his knees buckle for a moment. “Or we’ll be buried, too.”

Shiro is wide-eyed and bleeding from a cut along his brow, hair stuck back with a slick of sweat. He glares hard at Sendak as he passes, lip curling in tight disgust, only to soften at the sight of Keith.

“Keith—”

“Thank me later, Shiro,” he says as he tugs the prince along after him.

There’s a weary sense of loss as they bolt through the chamber, deafened by the sounds of inward destruction and clouded by the crumbling earth. Such a short time spent here, and Keith still feels its destruction like a swift unhorsing. A single intact Altean ruin, surviving ten millennia or more, only for the Galra to appear and raze it, too.

Keith nearly stumbles over a body in the long hall toward their escape, and for a moment he flies into panic— but it’s only Sendak’s subordinate, a Galra of similar stature but thinner build, already dispatched by the other paladins.

At the pale, glossy doors of the lift that once led to a sky-high observatory, grappling hands urgently pull the both of them in.

“About damn time,” Lance grouses over the chorus of shouts and relieved prayers to the gods. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Shiro says without pause, though he’s battered and sporting a trail of blood that drips from his chin, mixing with sweat to run down his throat and into his collar. “You?”

“The other one was trying to sneak around and flank us,” Pidge says quietly. She doesn’t look hurt, not physically, but there’s still a tremble in her voice. “I stopped him.”

Keith nods and braces himself against the lifts glossy walls as they lurch and stutter to a near stop before the upward motion resumes. It’s a tense ride, and more than once Keith wonders if they’ll make it to the top, to the surface, to the bleaching sun and dry wind and the stars he knows to travel by. The powerful magic Allura’s father had used to bury the ruins and hide what was precious to him from Zarkon couldn’t last forever; the spell was broken, and the crushing weight of the earth surrounding the hollow Altean buildings was taking its toll.

When the lift screeches to a halt and Hunk pries the doors open, Keith sees a distant glimmer of low evening light. The tunnel stretches perhaps forty feet— forty feet of solid stone Allura had blasted a way through, and even now it groans as the earth underneath them shifts.

“The horses,” Shiro says, breathless as they scurry toward the opening that brings them back to fresh air and the wide expanse of the Wastes. “They must be panicking.”

“We won’t get clear of here in time without them,” Hunk adds, stumbling as the ground gives another tumultuous shake. “There is _zero_ structural integrity! Collapse is really, _really_ imminent.”

“With me, Princess,” Shiro says as they round a distinct jut of stone that marks the camp they’d set up earlier in the day. “Hunk, you carry Coran—”

“Uh, Shiro?” Keith says, grabbing the prince’s arm to pull him up short.

Camp lies ahead, and so do the horses, still tethered to a length of petrified wood where they’d been left hours ago. They’re braying for their lives, eyes rolling with fright, worked into a state of uncontrollable panic— and it isn’t from the increasingly violent movements of the foundation beneath them.

“A dragon,” Pidge exhales somewhere behind them.

Keith’s lost in the awe and terror of it. It’s the same creature he saw earlier, in Sendak’s command, boring through earth and ancient walls to reach the warlord’s prey. Too enormous to be believed, if not witnessed. Its head alone is larger than Shabrang, and as its massive jaws part, there’s the sticky glimmer of dozens of sword-length teeth behind jagged lips.

Worse still is its state. Skin hanging in loose strips around its bones, portions of flesh missing entirely. It looks half-rotten, and Keith has no idea how it can fly on wings as tattered as a fallen battle standard. The hue of Galra magic peeks between its bones and sinews— like the undead Galra revenants in their armor, like the light at the core of Shiro’s arm— and spills from its mouth as those jaws open wide in a deathly silent roar.

The earth shakes anew as it crawls down the side of the stony outcropping it had perched on, serpentine neck coiling as it sizes up this new prey.

Keith can’t see them outriding it, even as Shiro and Lance manage to quell some of the horses’ terror and cut them loose, all of them hurrying to mount up. He can’t see fighting it, either— not before they’re all consumed by the crumbling of the earth, at any rate.

Still, they ride. It’s desperate, and likely futile, but there’s nothing else to do for it.

The first beat of the dragon’s wings is enough to stir a gust that casts Pidge halfway off of her mount’s saddle, hanging on by the grace of her grip on the reins alone. The sound it makes behind them is guttural and rasping, like a thin shade of what its roar must’ve been before the soft tissue along its throat rotted away.

“Keep riding!” Allura commands from behind Shiro, urging him and Shabrang forward, her focus never straying from some point thirty, forty yards ahead. Whatever she says next is drowned out by the thunder of wings that blot out the first evening stars and spin dustdevils into existence.

Keith urges Red on, following half a horse behind on Shiro’s right flank, like he has so many times before. A calm settles in him, somewhere under the primal fear that has his heart striking his sternum and his body drenched in cold sweat.

If they’re going to die, he’d rather do it together.

A brilliant spark of light bursts ahead of them, and Red nearly bolts from his control in her fear. She isn’t the only one to skitter, to stumble. Not Shabrang, though— Shiro and his stallion stay the course, with Allura at his back, her arms outstretched wide and her hands aglow.

The light ahead grows and spreads until it forms a shimmering circle of swirling blue edged in firefly runes and mirage-haze. A portal, Keith guesses, although this kind of magic is supposed to be long lost.

There is no knowing what lies on the other side, and nothing to do but trust Allura to deliver them somewhere safer. Shiro disappears through the gateway first, just a second ahead of Keith and the rest.

Keith breathes in deep just before meeting the wall of rippling magic headlong, so close now that he can see what look like fragments of starlight and aurora in it. There’s a lurch as the earth gives way under Red’s hind legs; the roar of an unmitigated typhoon as the undead dragon bears down on them, its violet-tinged flames reflecting in the glossy shimmer of the portal’s surface.

Keith doesn’t know if he’ll make it until the moment he’s through.

Red hits the new earth stumbling, and the impact finally jars Keith loose. He lands on his back, groaning in the paladin armor that breaks his fall, and when he opens his eyes, it’s to a nighttime sky that holds only half as many stars as the one he’s used to.

A hand finds him in the dark, hovering just above his chest. It’s Shiro’s, he realizes as they grasp each other’s forearms, and he lets the prince haul him up onto his feet. He can feel the solid thunk of Shiro’s other hand across the back of his armor, and although the embrace is made awkward by paladin plate and their knocking helms, Keith melts into it.

“Everyone made it through,” Shiro says up close, his breath cool over Keith’s sweat-damp skin, tingling where it edges along the soaked hair pressed to temple by the helmet. He holds Keith for moments longer, until their breaths slow and the aches of their scrapes and bruises settle in deep.

Shiro draws his arms in and Keith doesn’t realize what his prince is doing until the bindings of his red helm come loose and large hands are gently sliding it off of Keith, heedless of the sweaty mess of skewed hair underneath. He drops Keith’s helm to the ground and undoes his own next, letting it unceremoniously join the red one at their feet.

Keith’s breath stills in his throat as Shiro winds a gauntleted hand around his drenched nape to cradle him close. The prince leans down to press their foreheads together, damp and bloodied and dirt-stained as they are, and closes his eyes almost peacefully.

“Keith…” Partially dried blood still streaks half of Shiro’s face. It’s tacky where it meets Keith’s skin, leaving hints of color on the red paladin’s brow. His fingers work through the tangle of Keith’s hair, thumb rubbing gentle across a pulse point along his throat.

“Shiro.” Keith has words, for once, but they dry up in his throat and die. The only one that lasts the journey is Shiro’s name, and so he says it again and again, so grateful to have him still.

“Shiro, Shiro,” he murmurs as he drags his hands up through the man’s two-toned hair, slick with sweat and a touch of blood. He wishes his hands were bare to feel him true, but this will satisfy for now.

“Where are we?” Keith asks, when it feels like the moment between them has passed. For the first time, he thinks to check on the others.

Allura is cradled between Coran and Lance, buffering her from the rocky soil; she’s awake but weakly so, and can barely manage a sip of water before slumping back against Coran. Hunk and Pidge are studying the stars— or trying to, through the smoky haze that blankets the skies— and surveying their surroundings with somber purpose. The horses mill uneasily, sniffing at dark and barren earth that offers nothing to forage.

“Somewhere in the Galra Empire, I think.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A change of view.

You have walked beside me

Down the paths where a thousand arrows sought my flesh.

You have stood with me when all others

Have forsaken me.

I have faced armies

With you as my shield,

And though I bear scars beyond counting, nothing

Can break me except your absence.

When I have lost all else, when my eyes fail me

And the taste of blood fills my mouth, then

In the pounding of my heart

I hear the glory of creation.

_Chant of Light, Canticle of Trials_

☆-★-☆-★-☆ 

 

Shiro leans over the wartable, his bare hand spread over the dried ink etched into treated calf’s hide. In the gaps between his fingers, details of troop movements and suspected Galra encampments lay marked in a shimmering blue script that Allura conjured. She can move the lettering with a swipe of her finger to update the numbers and positioning, or vanish it with a flick of her wrist; all Shiro can do is stare and wish the figures weren’t so one-sided.

The metal claw-tips of his right hand strum against the wooden backing of a nearby chair. The ever-present ache under his skull chips away at his focus, and no number of meditative thoughts can quell it. Whatever the Galra druids did to him, it seems to have cured him of his old illness— those spells of weakness that left him bedridden for days, pain knotted deep in muscles that refused to work— and replaced it with something entirely new. The headaches are less debilitating but more consistently agonizing, and the current state of their defenses on the map isn’t helping.

There are so many moving pieces to the coalition they’ve assembled— the freed slaves and subjugated populaces from a dozen different territories, the rebels who have carved out a resistance against all odds, Lotor’s forces and his small but loyal band of generals… and the Blades of Marmora.

The Marmora, a cloak-and-dagger clan who operate within the empire itself, from the shadows that lay long and low across the land. They who have worked to preserve the old Galra traditions even as the emperor’s righthand witch withered Daibazaal around them. They’re a curious kind, wielding daggers made of a rare and precious ore— luxite, something unknown in Arus— capable of dampening and severing the druids’ terrible blood magic. Fearsome, too, upon the backs of their dragons: small creatures, compared to what the Galra once bred to dominate the skies, but quick and ferocious and as viciously loyal as Shabrang.

And Keith’s among them, now.

Shiro takes a drink of his tea as he surveys the units arranged neatly across the map. He’s been reading battles and the tides of extended wars since his maiden battle at sixteen, but no path to victory has ever looked so narrow or winding.

The Balmerans, the Olkari, the Taujeer. The ragtag rebels, comprised of laborers and house slaves repurposed into soldiers. Even with training, Shiro knows they all stand little chance against the hauntingly disciplined regiments of the empire. The reanimated corpses the Galra use for shock troops instill fear, but feel none themselves. Their revenants walk endlessly without need for food or water or rest, slowed only by the mortal needs of their living Galra commanders.

Lotor and his fifty-thousand trained soldiers are the coalition’s greatest boon. This palace and much of their food supply come courtesy of the disgraced Galra prince, and it’s only with their recent alliance that they stand any by-the-numbers chance against the full sum of Zarkon’s forces.

And then there are the Marmora. So secretive, but with good reason. There’s no marker to denote their base, no figures to show the number or location of their troops. Shiro can no more look to this map and know Keith’s current position than he could look to the stars and know Keith still lives and breathes.

It’s a hope he clings to, though. A thought he can’t tolerate any other way.

“Shiro,” Lance calls as he struts through the open door. He descends the short, wide staircase two steps at a time, nearly spilling the food stacked in his arms. “I brought us some breakfast! It’s those little milk buns Hunk loves so much and, uh, some cheese? Looks like cheese. Smells like— ugh, _ripe_ cheese. Hopefully not made from wolf’s milk,” he adds, gagging.

“The Galra do love their wolves,” Shiro comments, only halfway paying attention.

Lance spends most of his time here, now, with Shiro. Ever since Allura first took to Lotor, working with the Galra prince to salvage the magical knowledge of Altea and reconnect with the fabled realm of magic and dreams, Oriande. Ever since Pidge and Hunk found that the old imperial summer palace possesses a workshop that rivals the finest in Arus. Ever since Keith left on another long assignment, so all they have is each other.

“I have word from Lord Holt,” the young knight says as he spills an armful of bread and yellow-tinted cheese onto the war table, careless as it scatters crumbs across the priceless map. He produces a letter and unfolds it with care before reading the contents to Shiro, who is frantically attempting to brush the wartable clean.

The news is grim. Arus is on the brink of civil war, even without Prince Takashi present to stoke the flames. It presses at the corners of Shiro’s mind, a seam of guilt inside of him opening a little wider with every development. It’s where he ought to be, he knows, though he’s too damned to return.

Silva, the Varaderian Coast, the Stone Isles, the northern territories— all have taken up for him, even in his absence, prepared to fight for his claim to the throne based on Sam Holt’s stirring testimony alone. It makes Shiro’s chest ache with the steady squeeze of duty to these people who still think of him as their liege lord despite his vanishing from the kingdom for over two years.

His generals— Subutai, Senka, and Sujin— and at least one branch of his own family in the Vale of Narahir have concentrated their power at Arus’ center and through its bountiful heartlands, fully surrounding the capital. High houses who’d long resented him or his mother are aligned with them, along with nobles who found Shiro’s commitments to a foreign throne intolerable. Support from kingdoms across the shallow sea bolsters their defenses, though Shiro suspects it will be short-lived once the Vela Rivera family’s fleet is in action.

He’s heard through the grapevine that even Lance’s pirate sister has pledged herself against the usurping generals on the throne— a gesture worthy of a full pardon, should they be victorious.

Lance needles him until he starts eating something, unsatisfied until Shiro’s downed a small wedge of cheese and two rolls. Only then does he finish recounting the newest happenings: the Balmerans have two more mines up and running, their forges burning all through the night to help outfit the coalition forces in armor; Lotor and Allura made a breakthrough in their quintessence research, drawing a step closer to realizing the Galra prince’s goal of reversing the necrotic curse that currently grips the empire as a result of blood magic and corrupted quintessence.

“What kind of breakthrough?” Shiro asks.

Lance shrugs and stuffs an entire roll into his mouth, cheeks puffed full. “I don’t know,” he mumbles through it anyway. “Something only _Alteans_ can pull off, crossing into Oriande corporeally or whatever. The _royal couple_ didn’t need my help. It’s not like I can understand half of what they talk about, anyway.”

Shiro chews another piece of the strange Galra cheese and considers Lance, now mournfully sprawled over the wooden bench that runs alongside the table. Love unreturned is some terrible kind of self-inflicted wound. “That’s not a very winning attitude,” he says, ruffling at Lance’s hair as he passes.

He sits down on the bench, near where Lance’s head rests against charred wood, and looks down at the forlorn knight. “You know, I was always taught that the most noble kind of love is unrequited.”

Lance’s eyes— a blue like the sea, which seems fitting— finally fix on him. He looks miserable. “Yeah?”

“It’s selfless, that way,” Shiro explains, thinking of lectures from his mother’s appointed tutor and quiet social engagements with his elder family members. Of his lord father and lady mother and the cold distance that hung between them. “Pure, if you’re willing to love them even if they cannot or will not show it in kind, whether out of duty or a misalignment of hearts.”

He studies the material of his glove, its worn black scales and loose seams. It’s the same one Keith made for him nearly a year ago, and he’s taken great care to make sure it lasts.

“Seems bleak,” Lance sighs into the cavernous room, the sound bouncing along the high, arched ceilings.

Shiro draws in a small breath, nodding. “Sometimes, yes. But sometimes it’s the only way— the only alternative to not having someone at all. Even if Allura were to take Lotor’s hand, would you still want to serve her and see her happy? Can being close to her be enough?”

It takes a long moment, but Lance nods. “She’s… she makes me want to be a better person. I want to be worthy of her. I want to make her proud of me. I want to help her realize everything she’s dreamed of.”

Shiro smiles. “I think caring about being worthy of her shows you’re on the right track.”

Lance hums, closed-mouthed. “Have you ever been in love, Shiro?”

“It’s not really encouraged in crown princes,” Shiro answers, his smile going tight. A luxury reserved for people who weren’t meant for unions of alliance and diplomacy. Love and affection could grow in an arranged marriage, he knew, but his own parents were evidence of the opposite, too.

He’d had something with Prince Adam, undeniably. Handsome, generous, well-read, level-headed, and of a similar mind when it came to politics and their duty to their peoples, they’d seemed a promising match. And Shiro’d loved him, though not well enough. Not after he’d confided in Adam and found the other prince’s concern bent toward restrictive, demanding, _doubtful_ ; Shiro had valued what freedoms he had too much to bind himself to a loving keeper, and the abrupt end to the marriage talks had been a scandal that had left his mother palpably disappointed.

And now, cursed and disfigured and currently without a throne? His kingdom on the brink of a civil war and his own house in disorder? Wracked with nightmares that leave him trembling and his blankets soaked in cold sweat? Shiro doubts very many of his old suitors would be keen to have him.

He claps his hands against his thighs and rises. “Well, I ought to go see about writing a response to Lord Holt. Perhaps Kolivan can get a messenger out by tomorrow morning.”

“Oh, one last bit of news, Your Highness,” Lance says with a long, feigned yawn; Shiro purses his lips while he waits for him to finish. “Keith’s back.”

“K-Keith?”

A lifetime of lessons from his mother and other court players, and Shiro still fails to keep his composure unbroken. Keith is alive, returned, _here_ , right now, and Shiro’s anxious worrying has been for naught. He tries to recover, to school his anticipatory surprise into something less visibly affected.

Judging by the look he receives from Lance, he’s failed.

“When? Why didn’t you— I haven’t even— ugh, _Lance_ ,” Shiro says through his teeth, suddenly and acutely aware of the Varaderian knight’s skill at getting under his skin like a flaying knife when he wants to. Over their many shared mornings and afternoons in the last few months, Lance has grown very comfortable in teasing Shiro just as he would any other noble. _Too_ comfortable, maybe.

“What?” Lance asks, as if he’s innocent here, like withholding that information until the very end wasn’t calculated to see Shiro fluster and stomp. “He only left three months ago. Psh, I hardly missed the guy.”

Three months. A whole season. A quarter of a year without a glimpse or a word of him. Shiro sweeps his hair back, only for the tuft of white to immediately flop forward. He ignores Lance as he bounds up the stairs and out of the war-room, looking up and down each hall as he wonders where Keith might be at this very moment.

His palm is damp under his glove, his nerves alight in anticipation.

First he goes to the stables, knowing that Keith never misses an opportunity to give Red a treat and make sure Lance has been treating her well. And Lance has— as best he can given Red’s quick temper and quicker bites, at least— while Allura rides his patient and gentle blue-grey mare. But the long aisle is barren but for the servants and stablehands; Shiro leaves before they can start asking them questions, but not without giving Shabrang a quick pat first.

There is another, larger stable— if it can be called that— built to hold the enormous direwolves that the Galra are fond of using as mounts. Shiro stops there next. He spies Keith’s small, half-grown wolf beside Kolivan’s oversized grey, the both of them lounging in the weak morning sun. Krolia says that Kosmo will never be large enough to ride— too runtish, too starved when they first found him— but he is loyal and eager to fight at Keith’s side nonetheless.

He lets the wolves lie. If Kosmo is back, then Keith is no doubt near. Shiro is racking his mind for the next best place to search when a screech in the sky pulls his eye upward. As he heads back into the vast and thinly populated palace, he cranes his head back; high above, a pair of the Marmoras’ dragons wheel and turn, nipping playfully at each others’ tails.

Compared to the undead behemoths that the empire uses, these dragons are small and wiry, flighty, suited for quick dives and fast escapes rather than out-and-out battle. Kolivan says they’re a heritage breed, from the days before the Galra empire swelled with the dead and choked its own traditions half to death. The fantastic creatures are just one of many relics from the past that the Marmora have kept secret and protected over the millennia, ensuring that not all is lost to the violent excesses of Zarkon’s rule.

Shiro is briskly crossing a barren library on his way to Keith’s chamber when he catches sight of something dark at the periphery of his vision— silent, dark, shrouded. His gut screams assassin, and every muscle in his body tenses tight until recognition of the Marmora clan’s deep colors cuts him loose.

It’s the furthest thing from an assassin. One meant for _him_ , at least.

“Keith,” he greets, a thrill coursing down through his ribs at the sight of him. As fierce and fearsome as Keith has always been— in the sparring ring and on the battlefield, at least— his time with the Blade of Marmora has sculpted him into something even more formidable.

Keith throws back the dark cowl he wears, revealing ruffled, loose hair that bends and curls around his jaw, framing the pale column of his throat and dusting over his shoulders. He’s letting it grow long. “I went to the war room looking for you, but all I found was Lance moaning about Allura.”

His voice has changed, however slight. It’s just a touch deeper, and Shiro thinks he might not have noticed the subtle difference if not for Keith’s long absence.

Shiro grins. “I left it to look for you in the stables.”

They laugh as they come together for the first time in so many long nights and days spent apart. Keith smells like char and the peculiar scent of the nearby forests, almost lemony but sharper to the nose. It’s so good to feel him again, warm against his front, even if it’s _different_. Keith comes up higher, stretches broader; the arms around Shiro’s neck have thickened with hardcut muscle, and the prince can’t help but compare their forms. He doubts Keith will ever match him pound for pound, but he likely has a few more inches left in him to grow.

This extended spurt of growth is a Galra thing, as so many newly identifiable attributes of Keith are. How many puzzle pieces had finally slipped into place when they first learned the truth in his dearest friend’s blood— his unusually keen eyesight and sense of smell, his frightening strength, his unmatched stamina, that strange dagger. And odd though some of his… _nature_ can be, there isn’t one bit of Keith that Shiro doesn’t admire.

“You get bigger every time I see you…”

Keith preens at his words and stands a little taller, throwing his chest out, as if inviting Shiro to see just how much he’s changed this time around. His waist is accentuated by the tight cling of his Marmora armor, dark and sleek. It’s still slender, though Shiro probably can’t quite fit his hands around it like he used to.

“And you get more white hairs,” Keith gently teases as he rolls his shoulders and adopts a looser stance, reaching up to rake gloved hands through Shiro’s hair. “Cut that out or I’ll come back one day and you’ll have a full head of white.”

“The sooner we end this war and the one waiting at home, the sooner I can halfway unclench,” Shiro complains. When he says it out loud, he worries that it sounds never-ending. One war bleeds into another, and he’s been fighting them since he was fifteen, no true peace to even break the monotony of it.

Keith grunts softly. “Well. One war at a time.”

Shiro nods. He and Allura have been making plans to help resettle the freed victims of the Galra in Arusian territory, and he knows that will add another scalding layer of outrage to the brewing conflict back home. One headache at a time, too.

“I have information on troop movements,” Keith says, withdrawing an oiled-leather parcel from his leather chestplate and unlooping the tie around it. He unfolds the protective wrapping to reveal a stack of spy intel scratched onto parchment. “They’re amassing, Shiro. And Zarkon is bleeding his own people dry to do it.”

Shiro doesn’t doubt it. From the numbers, from the maps and movements, he can see that maintaining an army of that size must be draining— even if the bulk of its forces are undead and require no rations, no foraging for wolves or horses, and no shelter in the night. Violent expanse is all that’s kept the empire alive thus far, offering up new lands to sate its witches’ and druids’ thirst for quintessence and blood; now forced to turn back west and face the threat of the coalition growing in the heart of Daibazaal, they have no new and foreign land to reap. Only their own.

“It’ll be over soon, Keith.” And something new will take form, for better or worse. _Better_ , he hopes, because he’s too tired to consider otherwise. He wants to trust Lotor will be a better ruler; has to believe it for now, because they need his support and his army if they hope to stand against Zarkon’s full might and deal the empire a shattering blow.

“I sure hope so,” Keith says.

They attend to business, first. Keith has intel to deliver to a few different parties throughout the imperial summer palace, ranging from the locally stationed Blades to rebel high command. Shiro accompanies him to touch base with the other coalition leaders, though he’s anxious for them to be done and have some time to themselves.

It _has_ been months, after all.

They grab a quick lunch with Hunk and Pidge, who are poring over aged-yellow engineering scrolls that they claim predate the razing of Altea. It’s simple but delicious fare— an approximation of a comforting Arusian heartland dish using regional ingredients. Hunk had to swap in goat for beef and the root vegetables here are a deep purple and especially chewy; the thick, spicy gravy isn’t the taste of home that Shiro yearns for, but it’s pleasant all the same.

Satisfyingly full and relatively free of responsibilities until a coalition council meeting later in the afternoon, he’s content to spend the dwindling hours with Keith. His knight is borderline mischievous as he takes Shiro by the elbow and guides him back out into the courtyard, playfully shushing Shiro every time he asks where they’re going.

The sun is as bright as it can ever be in the smoggy, blighted empire. The purple-grey clouds that hang overhead diffuse the light down to a soft, tinted cast that sweeps over the sparse, manicured gardens and imposing architecture. There are few to no statues here, as Zarkon apparently came to reject such displays in favor of utilitarian designs, but there is artistry in the tiled patterns that run up columns and around windows.

“You know how the Marmora have been keeping dragons alive, right? In hidden hatcheries?”

“Right,” Shiro affirms, nodding along. He’s still being led by the hand, across stonework with stringy grass resolutely pushing up through its cracks. “For thousands of years.”

Keith looks back at him and grins. “I have one of my own now.”

Shiro stops in his tracks, his solid weight pulling Keith up short. “You have a— a dragon?”

The tug on his wrist resumes emphatically. “Yes! And I want you to meet her!”

Shiro can’t help that his heels drag a bit as they wander far enough from the palace that a whipping tail and wide wings won’t be an issue. He’s seen the Marmoras’ dragons— they all have, as the winged creatures ferry the Blades to and from the palace— but only from a safe distance. Though the beasts are trained with exacting precision, according to Kolivan, Shiro’s own experiences with the bloodthirsty imperial variants in the gladiator arena have him skittish.

“She won’t hurt you,” Keith says as they slow to stand in the open field behind the palace, not terribly far from the treeline of the imperial family’s private forest. Its woods are thin and sad, suffocated by millennia under clouded skies. “I promise, Shiro. She’ll protect you like I do, once she has a chance to know you.”

Shiro manages a smile. He trusts Keith. He trusts in the hands that slip under his jaw and around to the back of his neck, drawing him down so that their noses nearly touch. He can feel Keith’s warm breath on his lips as he speaks. “Okay.”

Keith holds him for a few moments longer, hands running back and forth across Shiro’s shoulders. It’s a sweet comfort. And then he steps back and whistles high and sharp, the sound enough to make Shiro wince. The notes are a clarion call answered by a distant roar, and soon the beating of heavy wings.

“Don’t be afraid,” Keith says as he takes Shiro’s hand in his own, threading his fingers through the prince’s. His hold is firm and unyielding. “I’m here with you.”

“It’s a _dragon_ , Keith,” Shiro laughs, nervous. He’s entitled to a little fear, he thinks. He has scars from beasts like this, and half-made memories of slitting them from jaw to gut in the arena.

But the Galras’ dragons are crude and unnatural, mere shades of what they ought to be. Either sick, starved, pitiful specimens stolen from the care of the Marmora and abused into cruel ferocity, or risen and rotting relics from the past made to fight once again, whether for amusement or total domination on the battlefield.

The dragon that lands before them in a whipped flurry of beating wings and stirred earth— _Keith’s_ dragon— is nothing like the monsters that Shiro has had past dealings with. She is, like all of the Marmoras’ mounts, a sinewy and lithe thing, built for aerial acrobatics and swift flight rather than broad devastation. Her scales are a mottled pattern of red and black, with the coloration deepening around her eyes and along her serpentine neck.

By the measure of the dragons Shiro’s seen, she’s small. But she still stands twice as tall as he is, with two powerful hind legs bearing wicked claws and massive wings that she bends to walk forward upon.

“It’s okay,” Keith assures him as the dragon’s head snakes close. His grip on Shiro’s hand tightens reassuringly. “Her name is Ataashi. She only wants to smell you.”

Shiro stands stockstill as the dragon’s nose hovers just before him, nostrils working as she scents the air. This close, the prince notices things he’d never, not in a hundred lifetimes, thought he’d see: the flick of her tongue as she considers him, dark purpled-grey as it slips between fangs longer than a human finger; her polished scales and the raised ridges down her back that shift and flex with every breath; the guttural clicking deep in her chest, underscored by a hair-raising purr; the texture of horns like burnt, split wood; the smell of smoke and old blood that wafts from her maw.

And her _eyes_. Gods, her eyes. Ataashi turns her head to focus one sharp, slitted pupil on him, its depths raking him up and down. The iris around it gleams like a polished star ruby, inlaid like a gem within a black sclera, and the mind behind it is so keen and searching that it startles him.

Shiro is strangely reminded of his mother looking him over before deeming him presentable to the palace court.

The thought makes him halfway grin before he remembers that his lady mother is gone, wasted away, so much of what she spent her life fighting for all for naught. He forgets that, often. In his mind, she’s still as she was when he left her— strong and enduring, unshakable, made of iron inside and out. He’d long assumed he’d die before her, either in battle or while bedridden.

There’s a bump against his chest. Shiro opens his eyes and finds it’s Ataashi, her scaly lips dragging over the chestpiece of his light, casual armor. She nuzzles against him again, but this time her nose slides up to catch him under the chin and skid up the side of his face. He can feel her snuffling in his hair.

“She likes you,” Keith says with the doting pride of a well-pleased matchmaker.

“Does she, now?” Shiro asks as a lengthy tongue slides from his nape up to his crown, saliva pulling his hair up to a sticky standstill.

Keith’s touch is gentle as he guides Shiro’s hand toward the jut of Ataashi’s jaw and encourages him to rub at the scales that rest there. Under the prince’s fingers, he can feel the steady throb of her powerful pulse, driven by the giant heart lying under layers of armored scales and iron bones. Ataashi’s hide is thick, hot to the touch, and feels like smooth sea pebbles under his bare fingers.

Starry, plum-red eyes roll shut at the petting, and the dragon’s continuous purr deepens into a satisfied rumble.

Shiro belatedly realizes he’s been holding his breath. When he lets go, a small laugh bubbles out with it. This is— even after everything else he’s been through in the last two years— utterly amazing and ridiculous. He’d grown up learning that dragons were as much a relic as the fabled Arusian lion, and now here he stands, petting one as if she’s a docile horse.

“How did you manage this, Keith?” he asks as his knight gives simple commands that Ataashi eagerly responds to: stretching out her wings for inspection, rising up on her haunches, snapping her jaws in the air and breathing a sharp jet of white-edged flame high above their heads.

“I was helping in the hatchery and she… we got attached to each other, I guess. Kolivan said I could have her, if I took responsibility for her training.” The last command Keith gives has the dragon bowed low, neck turned, as if ready for a rider to climb astride her ridged back.

“Are we flying?” Shiro asks. A thrill grips him by the heart and refuses to relent. He’s seen how the Marmora fly their dragons, held to the saddle by nothing more than their feet looped through the leather rigging, and he ought to be terrified by the prospect.

Instead, he wonders if he might _like_ it. If it might be fun, eye-opening— even if the skies here are nowhere near as beautiful as Arus’. He imagines soaring like his falcons used to, effortless as a dream; he thinks of clinging tight to Keith, who would sooner fall with him than let Shiro tumble to the earth alone.

“Not today, no,” Keith says, smiling regretfully, and Shiro tries to mask the odd rush of disappointment he feels. With a pat, he sends Ataashi skyborn, the dragon pushing off of the ground and twirling into the air in spectacular fashion. “She’s tired.”

Shiro watches her glide over the fields and above the palace before banking toward the massive roost that the Marmora set up for their sky-mounts. She’s a gorgeous creature. She suits Keith, who only seems to grow more awe-inspiring by the day.

As they trudge back to the palace, steps slow and dragging, Shiro side-eyes his dearest knight. Keith’s always been heroic, noble-hearted, a good and trusted friend whom he holds closer than anyone else— but when did he become a figure out of legend? A storybook hero?

He’d seen the glimmers of greatness in Keith early on, but the shape its taken continues to surprise him. His growth is boundless, and his ascension is something magnificent to witness firsthand. Orphaned thief to knight to royal retainer, wandering knight to champion of a rebellion against the Galra Empire, a paladin of Voltron and a Blade of Marmora and now a dragon-rider, too. An assailant turned sparring partner, companion to trusted friend, and friend to—

No, nothing more. That thought twists in his gut, unsettled even as he and Keith catch up after their months apart.

They walk to the council meeting together, sliding into a grand library already thick with the bodies of rebel leaders, representatives of liberated peoples, defected Galra commanders, and the silent Blades of Marmora. Keith stays with him rather than rejoin Kolivan and the others, and Shiro takes some pleasure from the hint of favoritism.

Lotor already stands at Allura’s right, so Shiro takes up a place on her left and tries to ignore Keith at his flank, currently glaring past him at an oblivious Lotor. It’s so like him to be offended on his behalf over some tiny slight, and he has some sour company in Coran, who likewise eyes Lotor as he wrings his mustache.

The assembly passes in three cramped, sweaty, headache-inducing hours of barely-contained chaos, no matter how often the three royals in the room try to call for order. There’s still distrust between the rebels and Lotor’s Galra officers; there’s still distrust of the Marmora, even, for their secretive nature and their perceived lack of action over Zarkon's long reign.

Allura is, as she always manages in front of shouting throngs of their allies, a commanding presence. Whether on the battlefield or under a barrage of short-sighted accusations, she’s steady. In moments like this, Shiro thinks of how much his mother would’ve respected Princess Allura, for all they'd be at odds on matters of policy.

The Marmora present their recently gained intelligence— that Zarkon and his armies are on the approach, their war-beasts roused and legions assembled— to an uneasy crowd. Allura quashes mutterings about the shadowy order’s trustworthiness with an eloquent few lines, and the room slowly accepts the news and what it means.

After a vote, the princess announces what Shiro had known would one day come— a reckoning, a true test of whether anyone can stand against the Galra Empire and live. It’s hung over his head for these last two years like a suspended axe, the executioner’s swing stayed by just a whim of time. Now, it lies so close he can feel its icy touch along his nape.

They’ll be marching to meet Zarkon because there is no other course of action left to them— not having thrown off their chains and broken from the empire. Not after defying Zarkon and Haggar for so long. Not after taking up the mantle of the paladins of Voltron.

Shiro feels too nauseous for dinner after it’s done. The close heat from the press of bodies, the stale library air, the constant murmur of the crowd and the occasional bursts of outrage— it all presses in on his skull in steady waves, each one lapping at his mind like the surf on the shore. He’s had more headaches in the past few months than he did in the first twenty years of his life combined, and he fervently hopes that the close of this war will bring him some relief.

After speaking with Kolivan, Keith accompanies him to the kitchens to grab dinner for himself and a loaf of bread for Shiro in case he finds his appetite. They head up one of the palace’s towers, round and round the spiral staircase, until they reach an old and abandoned observatory that Shiro has taken to hiding in when he requires refuge from Lance’s chatter and the incessant demands of their allies.

It makes for a peaceful spot as they sit with crossed legs on the narrow balcony, the passing wind toying with their hair. It’s silent except for the sounds of Keith’s eating and the distant calls of the guards wandering the grounds below, keeping patrol around the palace and the fields upon fields of tents where sleeping soldiers lay. Though watchfires burn brilliant orange and windows throughout the palace are faintly aglow, the night sky itself is as dark and deep as black honey.

Eventually, with some prodding from a concerned Keith, Shiro tears off a chunk of bread and nibbles at it. It tastes like nothing to him, his mind stuck so fast on the onslaught to come that his senses barely register.

“You know,” Keith says once he’s finished his meal, wiping his mouth clean with the back of a bare hand, “I’ve flown above the clouds here and seen the stars.”

“Really?” Shiro smiles. He sometimes forgets that the heavens exist even here, above Daibazaal, where the lingering effects of Zarkon’s fetid magic have cast a haze over the skies that never quite dissipates.

Keith nods, the shadows playing over his lips as he grins back. “Yeah. They’re different than the ones at home. No Shirogane queens and kings. No lions. No Shishimaru.”

“What a shame,” Shiro sighs. He misses the skies of Arus, of the Vale of Narahir, where his tutors kept him up late nights until he’d memorized the history of the heavens and knew how to chart their stars for navigation.

“Still pretty, though. Untouched,” Keith says, sparing a glance up at the fog that smudges the moon and blots the stars. “Kolivan thinks the land here might go back to how it was, once. In time.”

It sounds overly optimistic to Shiro, but Kolivan is nothing if not realistic. He admires the Blades’ leader for his stoic commitment to the cause, his perseverance in the face of astounding loss: his nation and culture to the sway of hungry blood magic; his fellow Blades in the line of duty; his mate and righthand, Antok, during their unsuccessful ambush of Zarkon half a year ago. Kolivan has given so much of what’s dear to him to see the end of the empire and Shiro hopes, for his sake, that they can find a way to heal what’s left afterward.

“Do they even remember their constellations? The stars’ names?” he asks. It’s been at least two millennia, according to Lotor, since Daibazaal could see the skies clearly.

Keith shrugs. “I’m sure they have some star-charts squirreled away somewhere. Kolivan’s an archivist at heart.”

Keith talks more of flying and the wonders he’s seen from high above the treetops. He claims there’s a band of bright and milky starring that runs across the horizon here, and the distant touch of aurora far to the south. Rivers and their tributaries run like watered ink, and even the wasted land looks almost beautiful from breathtaking heights.

And as he speaks, Shiro watches and wishes. Keith is— he’s _beautiful_. Ethereal and dark-eyed, so soulful that Shiro’s breath slips away just from seeing him. A vision in dark Marmora armor and windswept hair, the sharp lines of him only grown stronger during his absence.

The prince drinks in the sight of this new Keith like the inky black earth that absorbs every speck of moonlight that falls.

Shiro had saved him, once. He hadn’t known, then, that he was sealing the bonds of fate. He’d seen the streak of potential in Keith, some sliver of the man he could be versus the corpse he was soon to become; he’d thought it would be such a shame to see it go unrealized, and figured he could save a life and a future in one fell swoop.

He’d been younger, then, and quicker to antagonize his handlers with troublesome acts of charity. His desire to help had been sincere, always, but Shiro’d be lying if he said he didn’t derive a certain joy from making his more controlling retainers squawk and bluster at the indignity of being made to bend backwards for people considered far beneath their station.

Shiro had reached out to pickpockets and orphans and the hardship-pressed Arusians who teetered on the edge of true crime before— made arrangements for them to be apprenticed, paid for room and board, helped locate family or willing caretakers— but he’d never dared to bring someone from the streets into his mother’s palace.

It was the look in Keith’s eyes that had done it, bent but unbroken as he awaited a swift and unceremonious execution in an otherwise empty alleyway. Shiro had seen it and known that whether he chose to spare the thief by leaving him at a temple or finding him work in the stables, the boy would run. He’d bolt, blow away like the desert brambles in the Ariz Wastes he no doubt came from, and never put roots anywhere at all.

Even thin and stunted from malnourishment, Keith had been strong enough to best Shiro and two of his most trusted retainers. The prince could only imagine what he’d become if given the opportunity to grow, and he’d decided— spur of the moment, fresh off of a brutal campaign and desperate to unsully himself with an act of good— that it was worth sticking his neck out for the thief who’d knocked him flat on his ass ten minutes prior.

Did the gods look down and laugh then, knowing what was to come? Shiro can’t count how many times Keith has saved him since, and in so many ways that he can’t number any better. If there was ever a time he had deserved Keith’s devotion, though, it’s long since passed. He had felt unworthy of it even before the Galra refitted him into a monster, a disaster waiting to happen; the selfish way he seeks out Keith despite his corruption is proof enough that he’s beyond hope.

And Keith is too indulgent by half, too sweet in his treatment of a man undeserving of it. Undeserving of its _intensity_ , at least. Though remarkably at ease around the prince and a dependably grounding force, there is no missing that Keith adores him, though Shiro cannot fathom how he ever won such stalwart affection from the otherwise reserved Wastelander. He’s as valiant a knight as any from epic poem and song, and Keith’s ardent devotion to serving his liege lord is the last thing Shiro would ever want to misuse or attempt to leverage into something more.

 _Something more_. He closes his eyes and listens to the steady sound of Keith’s voice, wisps of his words carried away in the wind. He’s grateful enough for this and this alone— having Keith at his side, comfortable in each other’s company. The most comfortable he’s ever been with another person, able to shed his schooled, princely front almost entirely.

“Shiro?”

“Mm?” Shiro blinks his eyes open and finds Keith is close. _Much_ too close.

“How’s your head feeling?” Keith asks, the backs of his fine fingers pressing to his forehead, his temple, his cheek. Concerned, he even tucks two fingers against the prince’s throat to measure his heartbeat.

“Not as bad as before,” Shiro says, smile weak as Keith scoots behind him and presses his palms to the span of the prince’s back, reassuring. Tension still wraps his head like the press of a blacksmithing vise, but that’s the norm these days and there’s no reason to worry Keith with his constant aches and pains.

“Lean back,” Keith says, Shiro finds himself obeying without another thought.

Strong hands support him in his descent, and as the back of his head comes to rest on soft warmth, Shiro realizes he’s cradled in Keith’s lap.

“O-Oh… uh…” he manages, the height of eloquence.

“The Blades stationed here in the palace told me you haven’t been feeling well. Lots of late nights and missed meals,” Keith comments as he gently works the pads of his fingers along Shiro’s temples, massaging.

Shiro can’t find it in himself to be bothered that the Marmora spies noticed, or that they passed word to Keith. He’s mostly annoyed at himself for letting on when he ought to be better about masking things like this— the sickness brewing in him, the miasma in his brain. It hazes his thoughts until his head aches and the light burns to look at, and it never used to, and Shiro isn’t even sure which of his ills come from the arm and which came from his time in the arena.

Keith’s touch doesn’t quite soothe the pain itself— it runs deeper than that, somewhere under the bone, unreachable by even deft hands— but it feels good nonetheless. Shiro relaxes, strewn across stone and Keith’s thighs, and allows his eyes to fall shut.

“You need to take care of yourself,” Keith chides as he cards his fingers through the white and black of Shiro’s hair.

“I’m fine, Keith,” Shiro mutters. The last thing he needs is Keith worrying about him this close to the eve of a battle. When he opens his eyes again, he can see Keith’s face— at an unfamiliar angle but still lovely, his blue-tinged irises gone full dark in the dimness of the night and hair fallen around him in a disheveled curtain.

Too close, but Shiro wishes he were closer. Keith’s hands don’t stop, and Shiro thinks he could lose himself in his knight’s gentle touch for days.

“We should probably get to bed,” Keith says as the guards below change shift again, just as Shiro’d finally begun to forget his pains. “And get some well-deserved rest. Tomorrow is going to be busy.”

 

* * *

 

There are strategy meetings to be held, troops to be organized, food and armor distributed, supply lines to be established. Shiro remains on his feet from before dawn until well after dusk thanks to a heavy Galra tea that sticks down his throat and makes him jitter. When that wears off, he finds himself slumping against Keith as Kolivan and the other Marmora debate amongst themselves in Galran, no doubt weighing their full participation in the upcoming attack against their order’s continued survival and the preservation of Galra knowledge and tradition.

He gets a half-night’s restless sleep curled beside Keith, both of them still fully dressed, and then Krolia wakes them for a quick breakfast of thick, cooked down grain topped with nuts and smoked meat.

“Regris reported back. Zarkon is camped in the _Kata-Athlok_.”

“The _what_?”

“The Dead Earth. A vast and ancient catacombs,” Krolia sighs in between bites of her own breakfast. Even hunched in a plushly upholstered chair, the hard lines of her body read lean and strong under sleek Marmora armor. It’s the same uniform Keith wears, absent the hallmark luxite dagger that all Blades carry; hers belongs to Keith now, and there is no more of the rare material to craft anew. “He is robbing the dead of the dead.”

“Bolstering his numbers,” Keith mutters, jaw working side to side with audible grating. He thumbs the hilt of his dagger, currently tucked into the snug belt around his hips, drawing the prince’s eye.

Shiro saw it transform, once, shimmering as it took on the length and wicked edge of a full sword. _How_ that happens, he doesn’t know— Keith is none the wiser and the older Blades are notoriously tight-lipped. It reminds Shiro of their bayards, though the properties of luxite seem… more specific. The Marmora have prized the element for millennia, harnessing its unique nature to forge weapons that can sever the dark blood magic animating the dead and slay the unearthly druids for good.

“How far is it?” Shiro asks. The thick porridge seems to stick in his throat on the way down, making his words feel heavy.

“Four days if we wait for them to surround us here,” Krolia answers, a thin trace of amusement behind her words. “Less, maybe. We’ve already scouted a suitable battlefield about a day’s ride away. Lotor and Princess Allura sent advanced forces ahead to make camp. They’ve also summoned both of you to the war room.”

Shiro shovels the last of his porridge into his mouth and speaks through stuffed cheeks. “Let’s go. We’re going to have to ride hard to get there before nightfall, at this rate.”

Krolia follows them at a languid pace— her strides are naturally longer than either of theirs, and her trailing is deliberate. Shiro’s not sure whether she’s escorting them on Kolivan’s orders or out of protectiveness of Keith.

“You know,” Keith says as they head down winding steps and then through the long corridor that leads to the war room, “we’d get there in a quarter of the time on Ataashi’s back…”

Shiro snorts. It’s tempting, if only for logistical reasons, but he’s anxious enough as it is. “I think I’ll feel more comfortable on Shabrang. And he’ll be an ornery beast without me or you there to handle him.”

It’s true enough, and Keith smiles and tells him that he’ll get Shiro into the air yet, once this is all over. Shiro agrees to that, like a promise— if they survive this and have a breath of peace, he’ll let Keith take him anywhere.

They’re the last to arrive in the war room, and the eyes that follow them as they enter are worn with impatience.

Lotor begins speaking as soon as they take up a place beside the other paladins around the massive table. “Prince Shiro, Keith. I am grateful you could join us.”

Shiro’s tired. He inclines his head the barest bit and, out of sight, presses a hand to Keith’s lower back to steady him. His knight is standing with arms crossed and fingers clenched tight, drawn taut with coiled energy and itching to strike.

Lotor seems to sense the tension and gives a soft smile to diffuse it. “You only missed us speaking of the obvious. My father’s crimes against Altea and myriad other peoples, his unrelenting conquest, his corruption of our land. And that is all without touching on each of our own personal grievances,” he says as he braces his knuckles on the map-strewn table and leans forward.

Shiro scans the faces around the table briefly. Allura to Lotor’s right, her eyes soft as she no doubt thinks of how Zarkon betrayed her people, her father, her kingdom and everything else she’d ever known. Kolivan, stone-faced and silent, who’d added his mate to the list of the dead less than a year ago. Pidge, who’d lost their family and gone through several hells to wrench them back. Rolo, scarred and missing limbs, like Shiro. Olia, who’d had her family held hostage while her kingdom lay under Galra rule. Rebel commanders who wear mementos of fallen comrades around their necks. The imperial deserters who saw their fallen friends and lovers raised into undeath and feared the same fate.

Shiro blinks slow as the dried ink rivers and mountains etched before him shift in and out of focus. Up against the sheer scale of destruction and the span of time, his own suffering at the hands of Zarkon and his empire isn’t so enormous, though it looms behemoth in his mind. In the arena, he was one man. Just one life, torn and whittled into something baser and meaner, stripped down to the will to survive and little more. Small, insignificant. _A novelty_.

A warm touch along the back of his shoulder pulls him from the brooding thoughts. Keith’s hand, worked through the opening of the prince’s leather cuirass to make the contact more direct. Shiro turns his head toward him and smiles, grateful that Keith always seems to know when he’s troubled.

“My father’s ways are unsustainable,” Lotor continues, nodding toward Kolivan and the small contingent of Marmora that back him. “It is only by standing together against him here and now that we may put an end to this dark age that has been cast over us for so many millennia. And with Princess Allura’s help, we may even be able to restore these lands to some semblance of their former bounty.”

“But first, we must secure a victory,” Allura says, and though she’s beautiful as ever, it’s clear that she too is worn. She pauses to accept a cup of tea from Coran, thanks him, and downs the entire thing before continuing. “We will be moving out in full as soon as we are concluded here. With the help of Kolivan and Olia, Lotor and I have already nailed down a few key details of our strategy.”

Lotor nods and adds, “In the interest of securing the throne, I alone will face my father. Having a foreigner slay a Galra emperor opens up some… messy avenues for succession.”

“What if you fail?” Lance questions, shrugging.

Lotor eyes him, just shy of sour. “Then I am dead. At that point, _you_ can slay my tyrant father and deal with the ensuing _Kral Zera_ , for all I care. As long as you don’t let him raise me as a revenant,” he adds with the gravity of a genuine dying request.

Lance tilts his head. “Don’t worry. I’d be the first to take the shot and put you out of your misery—”

“Lance,” Allura hisses through her teeth, her head tilted sharply.

“It’s quite alright,” Lotor says, grimacing as he waves the concern off. “It’s more or less what I requested. In all seriousness, should I fall, it would be best if Kolivan or one of my generals could dispatch Zarkon. If one of you paladins must end him, then I would advise it be Keith.”

“Me? I don’t want to be emperor,” Keith blurts out.

Lotor’s smile is careworn but surprisingly patient. “You could hand power over to someone else later. Decisiveness at the moment of victory is essential, though, or the chaos could cause more ruin than Zarkon himself did. We need to make sure the surviving imperial forces see the victor as someone strong, someone worth rallying behind. It will save us much bloodshed.”

“You could also be acceptable, Shiro, for that reason,” Kolivan says from across the table. “If circumstances are dire enough. If the opportunity presents. Galra warriors far and wide recognize and respect your skill.”

Shiro didn’t leave behind Arus to take up the mantle of ruler in a strange place like Daibazaal, over a people he barely knows. He smiles, though. “I’ll, uh, keep that in mind.”

“It’s also vital that we dispatch all of Zarkon’s high warlords,” Allura says, gesturing to an array of carven figures assembled on the map, each one distinct in shape and color, “so that they cannot make a bid for the throne, either.”

Around the room, there are nods. Lotor adds, “My father has six warlords for us to contend with. His witch is hidden away in some distant crypt, to be sure, but she’ll find some way to meddle.”

Shiro sees the pieces laid out across the table and the strategy taking shape. His own piece— a lion of charred, black wood that’s been lacquered to a polish— is forward and center, between Lotor’s purple serpent and Lance’s blue hawk. It’s positioned across from a pink-tinged carving of a wolf with hunched shoulders, hyena-like, and Shiro has a bad feeling about who it signifies.

“We would do well to pit our strengths against their weaknesses,” Lotor says, eyeing Shiro for a reaction. “Prince Shiro, while I fight my father, I _must_ know that his warlords will not be able to come to his aid. Nor Haggar,” he adds, looking to Allura.

The princess nods, resolute even as she spares Shiro a sympathetic look. “I’ll rend her magic from the very air, if I must,” she says, and Shiro can see the Galra prince’s adoration of her grow.

Shiro only half listens to the rundown that Lotor and Allura give on each of Zarkon’s warlords. Pidge is up against a druid of high power, second in ability to only Haggar; Hunk will stand against _two_ brutish warlords, each of them towering even taller than Antok did. Lance is responsible for countering a warlord who is deft with spears _and_ defending Allura on the back lines, the weight of added responsibility leaving him quiet and sickly pale. Keith and the Marmora are tasked with the vital job of keeping the skies clear of the empire’s hulking, undead dragons.

And Shiro is pitted against Sendak. He’d heard through Lotor that the brutish Galra had survived the collapse of the ruins back in Arus, but no one— not even the Marmora— had glimpsed the high warlord in the year since. Rumors reached Kolivan’s network of spies, though: another stay with the druids, a new arm, a return to his position at Zarkon’s side.

Shiro stares blankly at Sendak’s wolf marker, positioned to the right flank of Zarkon’s black crown, while Lotor and Kolivan break down the finer points of their strategy.

At a gentle nudge in the side from Keith, Shiro voices a few of his own ideas and concerns. They’re woven into the overall positioning and staggering of their three-stage attack, and in the end Shiro believes they have a solid plan that could be a success.

If they all carry out their duties well. If the gods are merciful. If no one dies.

There is a rush to gather their things and leave, with little time to waste if they want to secure an advantageous position and assemble themselves before Zarkon arrives. Before he deftly climbs up Ataashi’s side and takes to the skies, Keith embraces him and promises they’ll see each other soon. Regret hangs over him as he watches the red paladin go, and Shiro tries to tamp it down as he rides toward the forward camp alongside Allura and the other paladins.

“Still can’t believe that guy got a dragon,” Hunk says, awed as Ataashi joins a loose flock of the other Marmora dragons overhead.

“Typical, flashy Keith,” Lance grumbles. “He’s got a horse, a wolf, a _dragon_ , a prince— can he leave a little something for the rest of us?”

“A prince?” Shiro asks.

“Yes, I’m counting you, Shiro,” the blue paladin says with mock sweetness. “You two are wound so tight around each other you barely even notice the rest of us.”

The prince snorts at that, and expects the others to leap in and join him in denying it… only to glance over and see four expressions of varying agreement.

"Oh, Shiro, Shiro, Shiro," Coran sighs, looking at him with an excess of sympathy. "It's quite lucky you're a handsome prince, isn't it?"

Pidge jumps in to complain before Shiro can even address the gall of  _that_ statement. “The day Keith got back from his latest mission, I stopped by to say hi and you two just— it’s like you were on the other side of a pane of glass. I don’t think you even saw me!"

“You _do_ often have eyes for only each other,” Allura agrees, her shoulders lifting.

Hunk snorts. “Just sitting across from you two during meals feels like intruding. It’s like, can’t you stop staring at each other just to eat? Just to finish a bowl of soup? It’s not like he’s going to disappear when you turn your head to pass the butter, I promise.”

There’s a little smattering of laughter and Shiro feels his face burn bright, a blush searing its way up to his ears. “You’re exaggerating,” he grouses.

He and Keith are close. Of course they are. And why wouldn’t they be? He saved Keith’s life first, granted him a new home and a new turn in life. Shiro had him tutored and helped him practice his reading and writing. He’d stuck his neck out to ensure Keith would have the means to pave his own way as a knight, even after Shiro was dead and gone. In turn, Keith had saved him from assassins’ blades and slinged arrows on the battlefield, and from the Garrison’s capture, and another handful of times since. He’d helped train Shiro in brutal street-fighting and dual-wielding. He’d stuck close to Shiro’s side with a zeal that had eclipsed even his family’s longstanding retainers.

Their friendship was forged tight through both war and mundane days in the palace. It’s built on quiet intimacy and fierce devotion, and Shiro sees nothing misplaced about having affection for someone so good and so kind. So… striking, all around.

“We’re really not. You two act like you’re chained at the hip half the time,” Lance says, though it’s warm behind the teasing tone. “And you _did_ absolutely blow me off the second you found out Keith was back. So… thanks for that.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean— I just… I missed him sorely,” Shiro says.

“We know,” Hunk says, laying a warm hand on Shiro’s shoulder. Shabrang only mildly snorts at the nearness of Hunk’s sweet palomino, who stands nearly as tall. “We get it. We’re all _very_ aware.”

Shiro has to be deliberate in not shrugging off Hunk’s touch. Their comments come from a good place— a sincere place, if with some teasing. There’s no judgment from them. Not like there would be at the palace or in his family home in the Vale. Here, there’s no condescension at the idea of a prince putting himself so close to a man of common birth and a less than upstanding record.

So he smiles small and lets his head rock to one side, embarrassed. In the relative freedom of their coalition efforts in Lotor’s palace, he’d stopped paying mind to appearances. Surrounded by friends and strangers, he’d forsaken even the most cursory of precautions against gossip.

And it had been… nice. Walking the halls with Keith as they traded stories from their time apart, not caring who saw. Sitting close on benches under the alcoves that line the palace’s outer walls. Taking every meal together, drinking late as they dared, sleeping in the same room for shared peace of mind. Open in their touches and affection in a manner that could easily cause scandal.

“I was surprised that you didn’t go with him,” Allura says, nodding up toward the murky skies. Occasionally, a Marmora-backed dragon still flits by overhead. “And even more surprised that he was willing to let you travel there on foot. Keith is so very protective…”

“He knows I can defend myself,” Shiro shrugs. With a fond look, he adds, “And he knows I’m in very good company.”

“That’s right,” Lance agrees, chipper as he sits up in the saddle. “Your Highnesses, know that I would lay my life down for either of you in a heartbeat. Shiro, I would personally send a hundred arrows through a hundred druids for you. And I’d slay a dragon for you, Allura. And not one of these puny Marmora ones, either.”

“Oh, how impressive,” Allura says, finding a nice balance between affectionate and smirking. She then teases Lance about the time she had to come into his tent to kill a spider for him, and Shiro finds himself laughing so hard that he has to wipe the tears from under his eyes.

The trip is long and the terrain rough, but they make good time. And though Shiro can’t help but feel some sense of doom as they chart a brisk pace toward the future battlefield, he’s in good spirits. Keith and his fellow paladins have a way about doing that— pulling his mind from worse thoughts, encouraging him to see the brighter spots in their circumstances.

They’re drained by the time they arrive at camp, leaving their tired horses to rest and feed while they split to tend to their individual duties.

Shiro stops Lance before he leaves, a hand curled around the younger man’s bicep. “Don’t get reckless with the heroics out there tomorrow, okay?” It’s a talk he used to give Keith at times, when he was so hungry to prove himself that he sometimes bit off more than he could chew. “Remember, we’re depending on you, Lance. _Allura_ is depending on you.”

Lance stands stiff under his touch, drawn up like the knight he was raised to be. He nods the barest bit, his eyes searching over Shiro’s face the whole time. “I won’t let you down, Shiro. Or her.”

The prince draws him in for a half-hug, clapping Lance firmly on the back. The knight stumbles off afterward with his head held high and a strikingly dark blush over his cheeks and nose, his step almost jaunty.

Shiro fields reports from Olia and a few of Lotor’s officers. There’s disarray among the rebels, as usual, and Shiro’s almost grateful for the war-governing experience he’s been accumulating since before he was even of Garrison age. After laying some considerable practical concerns to rest, he stalks toward the Marmora command tents in search of Keith.

The dragons are roosting further up the rocky hillside, along sparse trees that cling steadfast to the steep slope of the foothills that border the wide valley they’re occupying. He can see Ataashi from here— lithe and feline as she stretches and then awkwardly coils herself atop a larger dragon.

Shiro hears the telltale sound of approach behind him, but far too late. He half-turns and sees a flash of dark fur and pale trim, pearly white fangs, and a lolling tongue.

“Kosmo!”

He ploughs into Shiro like a furred battering ram, all wet nose and hot saliva as he greets him with enthusiastic licks up the side of his face.

“What _is it_ with your animals?” he grinds out as he attempts in vain to shove the oversized wolf off of him, neck stretched to try and avoid his tongue slipping over his mouth while he speaks. He can hear Keith laughing and making absolutely zero effort to help. “They don’t do this to anyone else!”

“Kosmo, stop,” Keith says, amused and unhurried. The wolf responds to his words, giving Shiro one last lick and a cold-nosed snuffle against his ear before trotting back to Keith side.

Shiro lays in place until Keith is closer, then sticks up an expectant hand. It’s meant to be a mild annoyance for Keith, a little bit of payback through inconveniencing him, but it ends up being nothing at all. Keith can draw him up to his feet with total ease now, as if Shiro weighs no more than a simple wooden training sword. The prince feels a fluttering little thrill at being lifted so easily and gently.

“He was excited to see you,” Keith says as he pours a little water from the pouch at his hip onto the end of his scarf. He steps in close as he wipes Shiro’s face clean. “But not as excited as I am.”

Shiro grunts in some vague agreement. There will be more planning tonight, and more preparation. They should be focused on resting before battle. “I could go for a drink.”

“Luckily, I brought some of that cherry wine you like so much,” Keith murmurs. “But only enough for the two of us.”

 

* * *

 

He’s still nursing a headache when Kolivan comes for Keith, waking the both of them with a pronounced clearing of his throat.

It’s not the last time Shiro will see Keith before the battle, but it’s the last time they’ll be close enough to touch. Kolivan stands aside and looks away impassively as they embrace.

“Keith, be careful,” Shiro murmurs. Keith’s newfound height has him saying it against the younger man’s temple, lips brushing the shell of his ear. Keith’s own breath is warm against the hollow of his throat. “I can’t be with you, but remember— patience yields focus.”

Keith nods, very close to nuzzling against him. “I’ll have my eyes on you, Shiro,” he promises.

“One would hope you’d have them on the enemy,” Kolivan says dryly from the tent entrance, stone-faced as he nods for Keith to come join him.

Keith huffs as they part, shooting an irritated glare past Shiro. When he looks back up at the prince, now at arm’s length away, he smiles so small and soft that it makes Shiro’s heart keen. “Make ‘em bleed, Shiro. And give Sendak a few blows for me.”

“As you command, Ser Keith.” Shiro only whispers it, meaning it to be playful— the same way Keith throws around _Your Highness_ when he’s being smart— but his knight seizes up like a panicked stag and goes red from ear to ear.

Keith’s mouth works for a moment or two, wordless. There’s a fraction of time where Shiro can hear the intake of breath, the beginning of a word, but then it’s sealed shut behind dry lips that are still a little stained from last night’s wine.

Kolivan clears his throat again and mutters something in Galran, and with honey-slow reluctance, Keith pulls his hands from Shiro and takes his leave. There’s one last look between them before the heavy fabric of the tent falls back into place, their worry masked under encouraging smiles.

And then Shiro is alone.

The sun’s not yet peeked over the mountains nor through the cloudy haze, but all of camp is abuzz and awake. He makes small talk with a few of the Galra soldiers as he washes up and changes clothes by the river that runs near camp. They’re openly interested in his scars, and one admits that she’d seen Shiro in the arena. She remembers the fight better than he does.

He heads to Allura’s tent for his paladin armor, grateful that she lets him stay silent while they help suit each other in the magic-imbued plate. They’re both mired in their thoughts today, maybe.

Fitting the red paladin armor onto Allura never feels quite right. He’d gotten so used to seeing it on Keith, to helping him in or out of it. But he’s with the Marmora now, and their flexible uniforms are more suited for flight; meanwhile, Allura is a high priority target who will need all the protection she can get as she weaves her magic across the battlefield, and the red armor’s fire resistance and alchemical enhancements suit her well.

She fastens his chestplate and they don’t quite look at one another. It’s not awkward, not really, but history weighs heavy on the air within the princess’ tent, carried in the very armor they’re donning.

Shiro looks down at his single gauntlet and remembers the sight of ancient, desiccated blood spilled over the articulated plates. Remembers that the black armor was last worn by Zarkon, of all people— stripped from the Galra warlord’s corpse before he was raised from the dead, stained with death as King Alfor spirited Allura and the armor of Voltron far from the emperor’s reach.

What a bleak thing to be the successor to. What a terrible connection to bear. It’s little wonder Allura kept the truth of the black armor’s lineage from him for so long.

With final preparations underway, Shiro has no time to think of Keith, yet he does it all the same. He worries for the Blade of Marmora and their given task: keeping the skies clear, harrying the empire’s massive, undead dragons before they can lay waste to the coalition with purple flames and crushing jaws. According to Krolia, Warlord Ranveig is a dreadful dragonmaster with a reputation for twisting the creatures into ever more horrific monsters.

And it will be Keith who faces him, hundreds of feet above the battlefield. Alone but for Ataashi and a scant two dozen Blades atop their own smaller, flightier dragons. Keith is competent, capable— Shiro reminds himself of this as the sun finally peeks above the mountains and sheds light on them all. The assignment must fall on someone’s shoulders, and there is no one who could do better than Keith. No one he trusts more to watch over them all.

Shiro remains sick to his stomach all the same, head pounding within his helm like the beat of the distant war drums that call the foot soldiers into formation. The morning rays, once welcome and comforting, bring him to wince.

In his misery, he wishes that he and Keith were side-by-side, as they’ve gone into major battles before. He has to hunt for a bare glimpse of his fellow paladin, positioned far and away and ready to take wing; he’s astride an armored Ataashi, the dragon currently hulking forward on curled wings, her blade-edged tail whipping.

Messengers dart back and forth as the paladins take up their positions on the field. Pidge contributes a color-coded set of incendiaries, one for each of them, to be used if they’re overwhelmed by the enemy and need immediate aid or rescue. Shiro turns the metal barrel of his signal over in his hands; it’s impressive in design and make, but that’s typical of Pidge.

Shiro’s been given command of two _tumens_ — Galra units of ten-thousand foot soldiers. Most of them are volunteers from regions recently freed from Galra rule, and few know anything of combat beyond basic training on how to wield a pike and hold a shield. He summons together the rebel officers under him and lays out orders, guides them on battlefield positioning, makes sure his intents are clear.

And as the battlefield takes shape before him— their ragtag coalition arrayed along one end of the valley, motley in armor and flagged standard, and the eerily quiet ranks of the imperial Galra forming rigid lines across the expanse— Shiro closes his eyes and breathes out, thinking of his grandfather’s voice and the sounds of the waterfalls in his family home’s garden.

It’s nearly enough to blot out the sounds of ten-thousand murmured questions and prayers, the shifting of armor, the distant bellows of horns. It almost drags his mind from the oppressive uncertainty that hangs in the air, the uncomfortable closeness of so many lives crammed into a narrow, pitched field. It just begins to take the edge off of the dull roar in his head, that aching note that never seems to leave.

But it falls just short. _Patience yields focus_ , he tells himself as he signals the forward battalion ahead. Again and again, until the words get lost in the jumble of his mind. He feels off-kilter as he guides Shabrang forward, a clattering rising behind him as the rest of his soldiers follow. There’s unease deep under his skin, in his gut, but Shiro knows he cannot betray even an ounce of that in front of these people who have so much more to fear from the battle ahead.

In these last two years, there have been days when Shiro thought he had no more fight left in him. When— in the privacy of his thoughts, left alone with his arm and the gnawing inside of him— he believed that he could lie down to sleep and simply die of exhaustion in the night, all that he’d endured finally catching up. That he could just fade away…

In old legends from the early kingdom, heroes would finish their great quest and be assumed up into the heavens, turned to constellations, and given reign of the night sky. Shiro doesn’t think he’d be one of them, even if Shirogane blood _did_ truly mean that the gods held them closer, cradling their clan in death by drawing them up to mother moon and all the stars. Serving Allura as a paladin, applying his military education to a war that feels more just and righteous than the ones he cut his teeth on: these are things that help, but the scales within him feel off-balance yet.

There’s more to do, and today is far from a lie-down-and-die day— it’s the kind that reminds him he _can’t_. Won’t. Would never, not while he has a purpose left to fulfill. His grip on the reins tightens until his knuckles blanch under his layers of padding and the legendary paladin armor.

He is, whether by birth or careful cultivation, a fighter. He didn’t survive this long for nothing and no one, and there isn’t a fiber in his being that could take death without first offering a firm _fuck you_.

And then there’s Keith.

It’s Keith whom he pictures as they advance another hundred yards, an eye on Lotor and his flanking generals. It’s Keith that he thinks of as he orders the thousand archers he has to set up before him, noting the visible tremble in many of them, the awkward inexperience as they draw and nock their first arrows. He holds his own bow in hand, of high quality Galra-make, and hopes to use it to devastating effect.

Keith’s been on fire lately, and that much makes Shiro smile. He’s always been feisty, full of passion, almost bull-headed when it comes to injustice too long ignored. His time with the Marmora has only kindled it— he’s seen up close the horrors of the empire, witnessed the depth of its atrocities, listened to his mother and the other Blades pass along time-honored stories of the Galra that have been all but wiped out by Zarkon’s rule. He’s full of zeal to set wrongs right.

And Shiro wants it, for Keith as much as anyone else with a dog in this fight. He’s finally found his mother, his family, ties to a people and a place he’s longed for all his life, and if they falter now—

If they lose here, they’re broken. Should they fail, they’ll be gathering the pieces and fleeing before Zarkon can claim their armor and add their corpses to his undead army. No noble final stand. No dying with their soldiers. Kolivan and the Marmora are united with Allura in this regard: even if it means they must abandon their rebel armies and allies, the Voltron armor must not fall into Zarkon’s possession.

That’s what the smoke signals that Pidge crafted are for, he supposes.

It’s a distant roar that begins it— the breaching of low clouds by seven massive dragons and one behemoth that puts the others all to shame. Shiro turns and sees Keith and the Marmora already airborne, scattering across the sky to strike at Ranveig and the other mammoth dragons before they can descend on the coalition in full force.

At a resounding bellow from a horn that is carried on and echoed by officers all across the front lines, Lotor starts commanding his soldiers forward. Shiro watches, waits, reads the reaction across the field— the first lines of undead imperial soldiers marching forward— and then signals for his own _tumens_ to proceed. He has his archers cover them, though even their furthest arrows do little to slow the remorseless march of the Galra revenants. They’re still too far, and too few good shots stand among them.

Shiro is there with his soldiers in the thick of the charge, hanging back just enough to keep an eye on Lotor’s disciplined ranks of Galra warriors in tight formation to his right and Lance’s mounted cavalry to his far left. In the middle, Shiro knows that his strong-hearted but untrained foot soldiers are the soft spot which the enemy will focus on, the point in the line they will try to shatter. It’s part of the strategy that will allow Lance and Lotor to pincer around the imperial army as they bulge against the weakest link in the chain, punishing Zarkon’s army for exploiting it.

As he raises his bow and stands up tall in his saddle, Shiro prays he can mitigate their losses. He takes quick aim in the lulls between his breaths and the downbeat of Shabrang’s gallop, loosing one thick-shafted arrow after another. He targets the Galra warriors first— leadership, command— felling nearly a dozen of them in rapid succession; they’re trampled underfoot by the unceasing advance of the revenant army, and the other commanders and warriors smartly veer aside to put distance between themselves and Shiro’s bow.

Order breaks down the further they go, their neat lines disappearing into the chaos of tens of thousands of untrained soldiers rushing toward death incarnate. Shiro had expected nothing less. 

Across the field, he can see Galra forces tearing down the hillside. Shiro hunts for one in particular and finds him with ease— Sendak, broad and unbalanced by the enormous arm he wields, in a forward position. The warlord is astride an enormous wolf with a maw that rivals a dragon’s.

Shiro urges Shabrang onward until he pushes through the front lines, ahead of his soldiers’ frantic charge, desperate to clash with Sendak before the warlord and his wolf tear through his men like reeds. On a city street, Shabrang’s hoof falls would be enough to crack cobblestones and split earth; here, they haul Shiro toward his enemy with the speed and fury of channeled lightning.

This close, he can see the wolf’s wet fangs and the polished glint off of the warlord’s armor. He can see Sendak’s wicked grin. He takes aim and fires every last arrow he has— the high warlord bats most of them away like they’re thrown pebbles, their speared tips shearing off of the curved metal of his arm. Shiro spends the last three on Sendak’s wolf, sinking them deep into the gaps along the creature’s armor, but they have no noticeable effect.

Shiro drops the bow and flexes his hand instead.

The black armor he wears ends just above the elbow of his right arm, deliberately modified to allow him to wield his cursed Galra prosthetic to maximum devastation. At a thought, the limb floods with that now-familiar energy, tinged sickly bright with blood magic. It sings along his fingers, vibrates all the way up to the juncture of flesh and unnatural metal. It hungers to cause pain, to bring ruin, and for once Shiro is inclined to indulge the desire.

To his shock, Sendak dismounts from his wolf at a run and sends the beast veering off toward the adjacent too-fragile lines of the coalition soldiers that have overextended. Eyes wide, Shiro watches the enormous wolf barrel past, ignoring him in favor of smaller and weaker prey.

The claws of Sendak’s new arm are hooked and lethal, and Shiro narrowly skirts a swipe that could’ve severed Shabrang’s legs on the first approach. The prince dismounts, too, rolling as he hits the dry earth. Well-trained for combat, his heavily armored horse circles them wide, biting and striking at the heads of any Galra revenants or warriors who edge too close.

But both armies give them a wide berth, even as they’re embroiled in the first chaotic clash of battle. Shiro keeps his eyes on the warlord despite the deafening screams and the gut-shaking roars of the warring dragons above. They circle each other slow, and Shiro hates the way his arm mirrors Sendak’s, alive with the same malignant energy.

“I look forward to presenting your corpse to my emperor,” Sendak sneers over the din, his chin lifting, “and seeing your armor stripped. I suspect I’ll be rewarded with a set of paladin armor of my own— perhaps the red, hm?”

“Never,” Shiro snarls back. “I’m not leaving ’til you’re dead.”

That only seems to encourage the Galra warlord. His oversized claws click together, the magenta-tinted magic arcing between them with every contact. He tilts his head, lip curling enough to bare his fangs.

“That mate of yours nearly crippled me,” Sendak growls, low and vicious but markedly impressed. “But this time, it’s just you and I.”

Shiro barely has time to block the first blistering swing of Sendak’s arm, all crackling energy that hisses against the magic emanating from his own arm. With a heaving grunt, he manages to shove the clawed limb back and away, and before Sendak can recollect himself, Shiro ducks low to the ground and bolts forward.

He’s deft at dodging, reaction times honed through years of avoiding Keith’s lightning-quick strikes. Glancing blows skate over the black paladin armor he wears, insufficient to even leave a scratch; the only piece of his body unprotected is his right arm, and that carries its own defense of terrible and living blood magic.

Close enough to smell the ritual oil and char worked into Sendak’s fur, Shiro lunges. His swing is blocked, but he sinks low and twists away from the Galra, imparting a sizzling slice along his forearm before lightly bounding out of easy reach. Sendak is big, powerful, intimidating— but Shiro remembers going up against foes even more so during his time in the arena. It doesn’t hurt that the black armor amplifies his strength to shattering heights, enabling him to match Sendak’s heavy-handed blows.

It’s what keeps him alive as the warlord redoubles his attacks, that awful arm of his whistling through the air and tearing gashes through the earth where it falls. He’s swatted aside, sent sprawling, knocked until the ringing ache in his head finally feels justified, but Shiro scrambles back to his feet each time and races in to carve at Sendak’s bulk.

They’re face-to-face— glowing arms locked tight in a contest of strength, his greaves sliding in the dirt as Sendak bears down— when Shiro sees the Galra’s ears twitch. He follows the warlord’s gaze upward and sees it, too, through the confines of his helmet and the sweaty bangs that plaster over his brow.

An imperial dragon dying for true, its tattered wings folded as the unholy magic empowering it flickers out and its massive corpse falls to the earth. To the battlefield. To _them_.

“Shit,” Shiro mutters as he shoves Sendak back a few feet and breaks their standoff. He spies Shabrang a safe distance away, but his relief is short lived; a faint, blotted shadow blooms under his feet, and the prince sprints hard to outrace the descent of the dead dragon.

It’s a near thing. Shiro’s briefly engulfed in the dust cloud that billows out from the massive corpse’s impact, choking on it. The felled beast crushed mostly unaware Galra revenants, but the misfortune is that Sendak escaped it, too.

He strikes while the prince is still struggling to get his bearings— the air is smoky, hazy, filled with stirred dust and heavy with so many sounds that Shiro feels like his skull might split. He doesn’t even hear the whirring hiss of Sendak’s arm until it slams into his middle and sends him flying, those pointed claws digging for purchase between the plates of his Voltron armor.

Shiro gasps hard when he hits the ground and bounces— once, twice— before tumbling to a stop with Sendak looming high over him.

“Nothing to say, Champion?” The warlord is peppered with streaky burns from Shiro’s attacks, his lush fur singed and dark with blood and soil from rolling across the battlefield. He considers the prince as he weakly tries to gather himself and rise again. “Such spirit. Perhaps I could keep you?”

“Fuck you, Sendak,” Shiro manages, fingers digging into the earth as he pushes himself onto his knees. When he tries to scramble to his feet, Sendak lays him out again with casual malice. Toying with him, really.

There’s no way he’d be able to get off the smoke signal without Sendak impeding it. He thinks he might be able to summon his strength again and strike hard, jam his burning hand between the plated armor across Sendak’s midsection. But there’s no opening, no opportunity to even gather his legs under him.

“Pity,” the warlord says, sighing as if it’s truly a loss for him. He sends Shiro sprawling again and then draws back to prepare a crushing, overhanded blow.

It’s averted by a sudden swoop of raking claws and the thrash of a muscled tail— Keith and Ataashi diving Sendak before immediately lifting back into the skies, where their real fight remains— and the large Galra is sent reeling back, groaning in pain. It’s just long enough for Shiro to roll back onto his feet and assume a low defensive stance.

“Can’t carry a single battle against me without your mate coming to the rescue?!” Sendak roars, truly enraged.

Shiro grits his teeth, ignoring the heavy taste of blood across his tongue.

“You disappoint me, Champion,” the warlord says as he lunges in again, energy arcing from his arm as he aims to rake right through Shiro.

And despite the pain coursing through his head and the rattled fatigue in his limbs, Shiro manages to hold him yet. He pursues the warlord relentlessly, pouring every bit of strength and tenacity he has into keeping Sendak at bay, forcing him to be on the defense at all times. There’s nothing decisive, though. Shiro manages to dig his metal talons into a section of Sendak’s chestplate and pry it apart, but the snarling Galra never lets him capitalize on it.

It feels as though they’ve been going at it for hours when the sound of triumphant horns cut through the din, though their bellows are nearly drowned out by the pulse thundering in his ears.

But Sendak heeds them, oversized ears flicking briefly the in the direction of the alarm. He rebuffs Shiro with an excess of force, throwing the prince back until he hits the broad side of the fallen dragon, and yells something to the surrounding warriors under his command.

“The emperor is dead and the day is yours, Champion,” he sneers as his mount is brought to him— that snarling wolf who stands even taller than Shabrang, the grey and black fur down its front now matted with blood. “May your alliance with Lotor _the betrayer_ be as unbreakable as the bonds of blood,” he snorts.

Shiro is almost dumbfounded at the sight of Sendak, large and domineering, turning from his fellow soldiers and fleeing from the battle. The warlord takes hundreds of living Galra with him— officers and warriors more loyal to him than a dead emperor— and abandons the ranks of reanimated revenants.

It’s a blow to the imperial army, but far from crushing. Shiro stands in place for a moment, stunned by the turn of events.

As the battle rages on around him, he searches first for Shabrang, stomach sinking as he comes up fruitless. It would take something awful to force his beloved horse away. Shiro whistles for him, increasingly frantic; the desperate note is lost amid the cacophony of battle.

Half-staggering, he dispatches a few dozen revenant foot soldiers with clean strokes of his white-hot Galra arm, ripping a violent swath through their ranks that has the rebels and volunteers behind him rallying. The metal aches where it meets his flesh, like something gnawing away at the softer parts of him. Above, it looks as though only Ranveig’s dragon remains, harried by a dozen winged Marmora and Keith,still soaring atop Ataashi. No colored plumes of emergency signals hang in the sky. Zarkon is dead. Sendak is gone.

These are things he is grateful for, even as his heart aches for Shabrang. Even as pain radiates through his every fiber, leaving him shuffling and hunched as he tries to carve his way through the remaining undead. Around him, Shiro can only see the murk of hand-to-hand fighting. His greaves slip in the blood-soaked soil as he sloppily cuts down Galra warriors who’ve chosen to fight on in their dead emperor’s name.

His next step falters as a sound roars through his head like the wail of a typhoon— battering his skull like wooden walls, ripping at his thoughts like they’re roof tiles to be wrenched up and cast asunder. The pain of it makes his vision black out and in, and he feels the blood-wet earth under his knees before he even realizes he’s fallen. Underneath the breath-stealing agony and the mounting pressure, it feels like _violation_. Like something is pushing its way into his head with the force of a battering ram.

It sears hot through his arm, up his spine, burrows into his head. It feels _conscious_. Aware of exactly what it’s doing to him. In a final and brilliant flare of pain, Shiro is wrenched from his senses and cast somewhere dark.

It doesn’t hurt anymore, at least, and for a moment he wonders if he’s dead— burned alive by some errant jet of dragonflame, run through with a lance while he lay incapacitated. But the gods have never been so kind to him, and as his eyes open again, Shiro realizes it’s something far worse.

He’s not in control of himself. His physical form marches with purpose through the enemy lines, unheeded by the Galra undead, leaving behind his thousands of soldiers to fend for themselves. Shiro has no control as he draws out Pidge’s creation— a brilliant signal flare that sends up a plume of shimmering black smoke— and mounts an abandoned wolf to ride clear of the battle.

There’s the haze of a living nightmare to every moment of it. Nothing listens to him; nothing obeys. It’s as if he’s paralyzed from the neck down, or strapped to that awful table in the Garrison’s custody again. It’s like any one of hundreds of frightening dreams in which everything he attempts to do is futile, his limbs made of lead and every movement as slow as running through honey.

He’d cry, if he could. He’d scream. But as it is, all he can do is wait and watch. And pray, when he sees Ataashi descend upon him where he stands alone in a quiet and secluded clearing, with Keith scrambling from the dragon’s back before ushering her back to aid in the battle in the sky.

“Shiro!” Keith takes off his sleek Marmora helm as runs his way, hair a slick mess of sweat and others’ blood, and Shiro would give anything in the world at this moment to warn him. To make him flee. To tell Keith to cut him down _now_.

He pours every ounce of his strength into doing something— anything, whatever he can— to show Keith that it isn’t him. That he’s not himself. That this is a trap of the cruelest kind. All of his efforts earn him the barest twitch of a pinky finger, and nothing more.

“Shiro, what’s wrong?” Keith says, breathless as he closes the gap between them. “I saw Sendak retreat. I saw your signal. Are you hurt? What should I do? Shiro, talk to me!”

His concern is palpable. And misplaced. Shiro can feel his right arm humming to life, alive with murderous intent, but Keith is so pointed in his concern that he doesn’t even notice. His puppeted body milks the ruse, and Shiro can hear his own voice telling Keith that between his injuries and the mental rattle of facing Sendak, he grew overwhelmed.

Keith doesn’t hesitate even once. His arms are around Shiro’s neck, the light leather of his Marmora armor giving easily against the black chestplate. Shiro can distantly feel the slip of fresh blood over his skin as Keith frames his face and runs his thumbs along his cheeks. It’s so fond, so sweet. More than Shiro deserves, and more than enough to be the death of his beloved knight.

“Shiro, everything’s going to be okay,” Keith says, consoling. “Listen, I’ll summon Ataashi and take you to the fallback camp. You’ve done so much, Shiro. You can rest while we finish the battle. It’s nearly done.”

“No. No, Keith, we’re both going to stay right here,” his own voice says, and Shiro has a painfully clear view of Keith’s face as the words rouse in him a mess of confusion and worry.

“Shiro?” Keith doesn’t stop caring, doesn’t cease worrying for him. “I’m here. I’m here, but— Shiro, what’s wrong? Please, tell me.”

“Keith.” His voice is low and raspy, and Shiro feels the cold trickle of fear as his human hand tightens around Keith’s jaw, gripping him in place even as the paladin tries to talk him down. The fear swells like the horizon as a tsunami crests, choking Shiro as he feels his Galra arm flare to brilliant intensity and plunge toward a struggling Keith.

And there’s no appropriate measure for Shiro’s relief when the haze of spent Galra magic clears and Keith is still standing, panting heavily a few yards away with his luxite dagger drawn and awakened into its full sword length.

“Shiro!” he screams, holding his defensive stance but making no move to push back or flee. “Shiro, please. This isn’t you. I _know_ you.”

The words pierce him as surely as any arrow ever has, hitting vital points that leave Shiro’s heart in the lurch. He can do nothing— _nothing_ — as his physical form leans forward and charges at Keith, the searing energy surrounding his metal arm fashioned into a bladed tip that would likely sever any conventional sword.

Keith’s blocks and parries hold up, though. His sword stands the test, but it’s the only defense he has— his thin Marmora armor is made for subterfuge and flexibility, and a single chancing blow from Shiro’s vicious Galra arm could end him.

“You’d fight me like this, Keith? _Kill me?_ ” he growls out as they lock in a contest of wills, the words as foreign as if they came from another’s lips. “After everything I sacrificed for you? You’re ungrateful and selfish, as always. Little wonder your mother abandoned you. I should’ve left you to _die_ in that alley—”

“Shiro, please.” Keith grunts as he holds Shiro’s clawed hand at bay with the blunt side of his sword, sweat beading along his forehead. “I’m not giving up on you! Do you hear me? Never. You’re coming back with me and we’ll fix this.”

“I’m fixing it right now,” Shiro’s mouth spits as he shoves Keith back and lands a devastating kick to his chest, something within the knight crunching from the impact of the black paladin armor. “Fixing a _mistake_ I made years ago, letting your wretched hide live.”

If those words leave Shiro quaking down to his marrow, soul splintered by terrible grief, then he can’t imagine the hurt they cause Keith.

Keith is a surprise as ever, though, and in the best of ways. He never stops trying to break through to the Shiro he remembers, and he holds his own even at a disadvantage against an opponent decked in the legendary armor of Voltron and wielding a vile metal arm. It’s enough to give Shiro a small shred of hope, though he can foresee no way out of their dire situation that doesn’t end in loss.

From countless years of playful spars and fighting side-by-side in combat, Shiro can tell that Keith is holding back. Glancing his strikes. Letting opportunities to hit hard and true slip by, never aiming to kill. By his moves, the prince guesses he hopes to tire Shiro’s body, or else stall him long enough that he can come to his senses.

Keith can’t possibly know that it won’t work— that the witch’s grip on his body is too tight, that the dark power flowing from his arm will continue to manipulate his physical form even as he bleeds out, puppeting him long after he’s nothing more than a corpse. The only escape from its control is, in all likelihood, the same brutal death that makes even the revenant soldiers fall: skull and mind destroyed, leaving nothing sufficient for the blood magic to work through.

He fears Keith won’t be able to bring himself to it. That he’ll run himself ragged trying to save the Shiro he remembers. That he’ll die, and Shiro will have to watch as his own hands betray them both.

Keith’s grown stronger with his Marmora training, though, and more agile. He’s smarter about when and where he chooses to strike; he chances on testing blows, looking for weaknesses to exploit without truly harming his enemy. He’s fierce as he counters the prince’s bone-bruising blows— eyes gone Galra yellow and fangs bared— and it sends a thrill through Shiro, body and soul.

“ _That’s_ the Keith I remember,” he says as his knight brutally throws him back into the stout trunk of a tree, his Marmora sword crossed with the solid energy extending from Shiro’s arm.

They tear through the clearing and beyond, rending trees into splinters, massive trunks shaking the earth as they topple to the forest floor. Twice, Shiro narrowly misses Keith and gouges the ground instead, the spike of concentrated energy emanating from his arm shrieking.

With a particularly brutal punch that catches Keith under his jaw, Shiro sends him into the air and tumbling back. Savagery the likes of which Shiro’s never known propels him forward, slashing and throwing himself into Keith until they plummet together down a rocky slope, skidding and bouncing over loose stones.

Keith’s sword skitters away and reverts to its dagger form, and he’s clearly too exhausted to reach it. Thrashed within an inch of unconsciousness, he can’t escape the hard crunch of Shiro’s heavy boots over the stone-strewn earth.

Shiro hates the sight of it. Hates his own strides that bring him to stand over Keith with his hand alive and eager to kill. Without preamble, he lunges in with an arcing strike meant to slice his knight from shoulder to hip, but Keith manages to grab his dagger just in time to block the blow.

“Shiro, please,” Keith begs as he keeps Shiro’s metal claws and their humming, searing energy at bay with the flat of his blade. “I know you’re in there, Shiro! _Please._ You’re my friend, my brother, my _prince_ , Shiro. You’re everything to me and I— _I love you_.”

For a heartbeat, Shiro has a fraction of control. Not enough to do anything except be present, eye to eye with Keith in a moment that has both their hearts flayed wide open; it passes and Haggar seizes the reins again, his voice grinding out hard.

“You don’t have to fight me, Keith. Just. Let. Go. You abandoned your comrades to chase me, and by now they’re all dead,” he snarls down at his knight.

With a burst of strength drawn from reserves Shiro didn’t know he had, he presses down until the edge of humming energy kisses Keith’s cheek. It smokes on contact, the scent of burning flesh flooding Shiro’s nose, and underneath him Keith lets out a pained scream that makes Shiro weak with his own powerlessness.

And for a moment, Shiro is terrified that this is it. The end. He’s a hair away from killing Keith, and all his wishes otherwise won’t stay the maleficar’s hand from using him as a vessel for her cruelty.

Keith’s scream bleeds from frightened to furious. His eyes revert to their Galra shade and the luxite dagger in his hand shimmers as it extends to full length, and Shiro doesn’t know how he does it— how Keith manages to muster the strength to swing his sword so swift and strong that it severs his arm right where the black paladin armor ends.

There’s an ear-piercing and inhuman scream as the luxite blade rends the blood magic that bound the arm to him, severing it and the dark-forged metal before the curse can even react to the threat.

Shiro returns to his body in an instant, as if he fell back into himself from a hundred feet in the air. He gasps wildly, curled over on his knees, supported by just one trembling arm. The pain is unreal, but it’s not trapped in his head anymore— it courses outward from what remains of his arm, his blood drenching the earth under him.

He lifts his head, barely, and sees Keith staring at him with a blood-smeared sword in hand, face bearing a fresh scar and his dark eyes troubled. There’s no measure for Shiro’s regret and disgrace for having done this to him— for forcing his hand like this.

“Keith…”

And then there’s nothing.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A time for happy endings.

When he wakes, it’s like the first moments of his homecoming to Arus all over again: memories in bare pieces after tumbling to the Ariz Wastes’ red earth from the back of Ulaz’ mortally wounded dragon, mouth as arid as the desert, the unsettling slips in and out of consciousness, waking to find himself flat on a table with men he trusted muffling his words with a sleeping draught-soaked rag.

But as he blinks away the stickiness of a long bout of sleep, Shiro realizes he’s not in a tent, nor bound to a table for examination, nor lying immobile as masked druids carve him apart. His memory still returns in snatches— the view of the battlefield from the back of Ataashi, hands cradling him to the ground, concerned voices and the sweet note of Altean magic— but the gaps in his life don’t frighten him as much as they used to. Keith was there, this time. Keith was—

“Keith,” he chokes out as he lurches up, only to slip sideways unexpectedly, off balance from his missing arm. A pair of hands keep him from tumbling over completely, and Shiro knows it’s Keith before he even lays eyes on him. “Keith!”

“I’m here, Shiro.” He’s shed his Marmora outfit for something soft and comfortable, more akin to the clothes he’d worn during relaxed afternoons in the palace. The fabric is soft under Shiro’s cheek, and Keith’s embrace helps to slow the furious beating of his heart. “I’m right here with you.”

“Uh, so are the rest of us,” Lance yawns from somewhere else in the room as Shiro labors to sit up straight.

“We all wanted to be here,” Pidge says, Matt hovering close by her side. She has a thin scar now that almost matches her brother’s.

“We’ve all been waiting somewhat anxiously,” Allura says from where she sits on the edge of his bed, opposite Keith. “You gave us quite a scare, Shiro.”

It comes back in jarring, disordered flashes. Abandoning the field of battle and luring Keith away. Awful, terrible words put to his voice. Keith’s desperate pleas. Slicing into his face and leaving him that scar— incontrovertible evidence of his failure to protect his most trusted friend.

“I…” Shiro doesn’t know where to begin accounting for himself. A lump spawns in his throat, pinching tight until his eyes burn with unshed tears. “I’m so sorry.”

Keith’s hands pat against him in a frantic attempt to comfort while Allura blinks at him like he’s grown a new arm all on his own.

“I only meant— we were worried, Shiro, because you very nearly died. Between the blood loss and the quintessence that Galra arm drained from you, I wasn’t sure that— we didn’t know if you would…” Allura’s mouth parts a few more times, searching for the right words. “We’re just happy you’re alive and awake again. You’ve been sorely missed these last weeks.”

“Weeks?” Shiro asks, aghast.

“Just two,” Keith murmurs. Glancing away from Shiro for all of a second, he adds, “Hunk, could you go get some food started? Something good for him.”

“Nutritious and easy to digest,” Hunk says, chin poised in hand. “Filling, but not heavy. Hm, I know _just_ the thing! Pidge, Matt, with me— I’m going to need some extra hands.”

They gripe and moan, but follow Hunk semi-obediently. Allura, Coran, and Lance take their leave together, each of them pausing at Shiro’s bedside to squeeze his hand or shoulder and give him their best.

And once the door slips shut, it’s just him and Keith.

“I did this to you,” Shiro says, drawing his hand up to Keith’s face. He doesn’t touch— too afraid of hurting him further, worried he’s not welcome to ever lay a hand on Keith again— but lets his fingertips trace the air over his knight’s skin. The scar is dark and only just healed.

“No,” Keith says, gripping his hand and very gingerly bringing the pads of Shiro’s fingers to his cheek. “You didn’t. Haggar did. And she took a toll on both of us.”

At Shiro’s questioning look, Keith turns and rummages out a mirror. When he holds it up, the prince finds himself facing a full head of silvery white hair, right down to his eyebrows and the lengths of his eyelashes.

“Allura and Lotor think it came from the shock of losing so much quintessence and then being flooded with Allura’s. You three are like a royal matching set, now,” Keith adds with a small and sideways smile.

“I look… old,” Shiro says, shifting awkwardly on the mattress. He tries to ignore his own blush as he takes the mirror from Keith and examines himself with a sharp eye. He’s whiter of hair than his grandfather was on his deathbed.

“No, you don’t,” Keith huffs. His hand works into the silky strands of Shiro’s hair. “You look as handsome as ever. _Beautiful._ Like you’re spirit-touched.”

“ _Spirit-touched_ ,” Shiro repeats, softly amused despite his mixed emotions and snaking inner turmoil. It’s the way mysterious, ethereal lovers in romance stories are described, or the gods in disguise when portrayed on stage. He’d never thought Keith went for that kind of thing.

Keith nods, standing by his assessment. “Like starlight. Like you came from the moon. Like the heavens let you down to walk here with us.” He runs a thumb over the paleness of Shiro’s eyebrows, along the feathery ends of frosted lashes. “White suits you just as well, Shiro.”

Keith explains all that Shiro has missed, beginning with the outcome of the battle: Zarkon dead and Lotor now widely regarded as rightful emperor; Haggar escaping with half of the remaining imperial forces; Sendak still missing and unaccounted for, the only surviving high warlord. They’re threats for Lotor to address, though. Their fight is back in Arus, now.

With kind, soft fingers, Keith checks the bandages wrapping Shiro’s shoulder. He explains that they were lucky that day— that Lotor and Allura suspect it was only the luxite of Keith’s sword that managed to cleave through the intricate spellwork before the curse could react with a vengeance. The Marmora had long valued the rare material specifically for its resistance to the magic wielded by the druids and their acolytes, and if Keith weren’t a Blade— if his mother hadn’t been—

Shiro doesn’t like to ponder how things might’ve ended, had the strands of fate not been sewn just so.

As Shiro fitfully slumbered for a fortnight, Keith was constant, sleeping in the chair beside the bed and taking all of his meals in Shiro’s room. Lance tells him as much during one of the rare moments that Keith leaves to bathe and tend to his animals, with a knowing look that makes Shiro’s gaze slide away and out the window before he gets teased for it.

In those first weeks, it’s an effort to eat, to talk, to sit up. There’s no shortage of visitors to occupy him while he’s bedridden, though— a far cry from the heavy shroud of secrecy and solitude that had surrounded him any time he succumbed to bouts of illness while at the palace.

Hunk and Pidge visit often at first, taking measurements and carefully examining his shoulder. With their combined mechanical expertise, they intend to craft him a new arm— one free of any unsavory curses. Though busy with mediating relations between the coalition kingdoms and Daibazaal, Allura devotes time to studying ancient tomes from Lotor’s private library, poring over anything that might help her perfect the technique of grafting and animating a prosthetic limb. A handful of Marmora accompany her in her efforts— Blades assigned to copying and disseminating the trove of ancient knowledge to the few remaining libraries in Daibazaal proper, per Kolivan’s orders.

But the vast majority of Shiro’s time is spent with Keith, who more or less continues to live by his bedside, all of his duties to the Blade of Marmora apparently postponed. Kosmo accompanies him at all times, curling happily at the foot of Shiro’s bed or stretching out beside him so he wakes to the smell of wolf breath.

Keith begins teaching him the basics of the Galran language, perched beside him on the bed until their meals are brought in and they take a break to eat and tentatively test the prince’s strength. It’s a tongue unlike anything Shiro knows through his extensive education, filled with hard consonants and long vowels, but it’s lovely coming from Keith’s lips.

Hard to ignore the glaring signs of the damage Shiro has done to him, though. The scar distracts him when he ought to be listening to Keith’s pronunciation and committing new words to memory, and Keith only smiles when Shiro mumbles requests for him to repeat.

It’s a mirror of the past, in ways and moments that make Shiro’s heart swell within his chest— when he had helped teach Keith to read and write common Arusian, stealing time together in his study before the prince’s morning obligations called him to court. When they’d whiled away hours in their tent on the war trail by copying poems from a book Shiro’s grandfather had given him, practicing Keith’s letters. There’s nothing but patience behind Keith’s eyes as he coaxes Shiro through basic commands and greetings, and haltingly explains the structure of Galran speech.

Shiro’s only other tutor is Krolia, who soon takes Lance’s place in standing watch over him whenever Keith leaves to bathe or tend to Kosmo and Ataashi. She is a patient teacher and unfailingly civil, but guilt rakes at Shiro’s insides every time she shows him kindness. They’d been on good terms— friendly, even— but that was before he nearly killed her son and left him with a four inch scar across his cheek.

“I’m sorry,” he says during the third afternoon in her company, the steadily rising shame finally reaching a choking point. “A-about Keith. I’m— I can’t apologize enough for what I did to him—”

“You have already,” Krolia says, eyebrows lifting just barely as she turns a page and points to a string of symbols that Shiro now recognizes as _qalabathari_ , a word that means someone who is as dense or slow as an ox.

“But I… I almost _killed_ him. All because he was trying to help me. And every time I look at him and see it, I…” Shiro swallows down what feels like a lump of barbed cotton. “You must think as little of me when you see him, too.”

“I do not.” Krolia sighs and snaps the book shut, turning it so that it rests in her lap. “Shiro, you did not intend to harm my son. No one here thinks that you did. Least of all Keith.”

“Intent or not,” Shiro says, looking away, “it was my hand that did it.”

“Your hand?” Krolia questions, looking pointedly at the ruined remains of Shiro’s upper arm, where a limb ought to be. “Funny. I thought it was a cursed arm crafted by the druids’ blood magic.”

He huffs, eyes slipping shut. “I mean, I saw it like I was the one doing it. The memory of it is… it’s _mine_. If it haunts me, then I can only imagine how it plagues Keith. And the scar, too. He’ll never be able to forget…”

Krolia hums softly, as if considering his words. “Among Galra, scars are often considered a mark of honor and distinction. A sign of prowess or resolve. The scar he now bears wasn’t gained in cowardice or defeat, Shiro. Fighting to save someone you love is _noble_.”

Shiro sinks back into the dense mountain of pillows against the headboard; it grows every time Keith returns, something newer and softer in hand, fluffing them until the prince feels like he’s sunken into a cloud. “I don’t deserve him.”

“ _Qalabathari_ ,” Krolia says as she lays a long-fingered hand against his head, sharp claws delicate as they pass through his hair. She smiles faint as Shiro’s jaw slips open at the mild insult. “Oh, so you _do_ know that word?”

Shiro’s lips remain parted as Krolia pries the heavy book open again and moves on to something new. She draws a claw under a series of symbols that remind Shiro of the hexagonal shapes in honeycomb. “You would do well to learn this one as well: _kadan-asala_. I recommend you ask Keith what it means.”

The corner of Shiro’s mouth twitches. He stifles any further spilling of his guts and nods to let Krolia know that he’ll do as requested.

The lesson resumes with no small amount of awkwardness, at least on Shiro’s end. He feels hot-faced and squirmy nervous under the covers, wrestling with the disbelief that Krolia could be so forgiving of him. She’s a little more direct than Keith when it comes to Shiro getting distracted by his own thoughts, quick to lean in close and cluck her tongue to recall his attention.

By the time they wrap up, Shiro’s not sure he’ll remember a single word of her lesson. Other than _kadan-asala_. Whatever that means.

A pointed ear twitches as she picks up the sound of Keith’s approach, and Krolia neatly stacks the books back on the nightstand and rises to her full and considerable height. “Rest easy, Shiro.”

“I’ll try,” he says, giving her a brief smile. “And… thank you. Um, for being so understanding.”

She’s worlds apart from Shiro’s own mother. And though Krolia was torn from Keith by the demands of the Marmora and her mission outside of the empire, absent for so much of his life, there is so much of her nature in Keith that the similarity is unmissable.

“You were worried about what goes through my mind every time I see Keith,” Krolia says, pausing with her hand on the bronzed doorknob. “Know that when I look upon my son, I think that he is very brave, very loyal, and very much in love.”

The following weeks give Shiro much to think about and a great deal of time to do it.

Keith is there each step of the way. Literally, even, when it comes time for Shiro to gather his strength and take his first steps in nearly a month, his legs weak as a newborn foal’s from disuse.

He lets Shiro lean heavy on him as they pace back and forth through the expansive bedroom, an unshakable pillar of support no matter the situation. For maybe the thousandth time, Shiro wonders what he ever did to win Keith’s heart so fully.

By the time they settle back on the bed, Shiro is exhausted. But he’s growing in strength by the day— he can feel it in the cords of his muscle, the itch he has to get up and move. By now, he’s almost used to the asymmetry of his upper body, though seeing his own reflection still takes him by surprise at times. What he’s not used to is the phantom pain that makes him feel like his fist is still clenched all through the night, aching.

“I think tomorrow we ought to go down to the paddock again,” Keith says as he draws up his legs onto the bed and tilts his head toward Shiro. “Shabrang is almost healed enough to ride again. And I can tell he misses seeing you.”

“He’s sweet. Clever,” Shiro says, half-absent. From this angle, in this light, Keith’s scar seems… harsh. Its edges are jagged, like the one across Shiro’s nose.

“You’re still upset about this, huh?” Calm and assured, he takes up Shiro’s hand and presses it over the discolored mark that reaches up from his jaw.

Shiro doesn’t know what to say. Under his fingers, he can feel the texture of a healed over burn, skin still rough and uneven. He does. This is his fault, but so is so much else. “About all of it,” he whispers.

Keith sighs. “All of what, Shiro? Saving my life?”

“No! Not that, never—”

“Sticking your neck out to give me the opportunity of a lifetime? Knighting me despite everyone protesting it? Believing in me when no one else gave one single shit whether I died in an alleyway? Leading me here to find my mother? My family?” He’s almost exasperated. “I don’t regret anything, Shiro. None of it. I’d hoped you’d feel the same.”

Shiro’s eyebrows pinch tight. “How, Keith? The things I said to you, the things I _did_. Gods. I see it when I close my eyes, worse than anything I remember of the arena. I fought you like a monster.”

“I didn’t fight _you_ , Shiro,” Keith says, softly. “I fought Haggar. I fought the control of that cursed arm. But not you,” he adds, shaking his head as he skims his free fingers through the shaggy white hair above Shiro’s ear. “I fought _for_ you.”

Keith is still holding his hand. Has it drawn into his lap, clasped between his palm and his thigh, fingers laced through Shiro’s to keep him from drawing away. Rather than hating him— even by a fraction, even for a moment— Keith only holds onto him tighter.

“I told you already.” Keith licks his lips, nervous as he summons his voice. “Shiro, when I said that I loved you, I meant it. I mean it, still. I always will, because loving you is just another part of me.”

Echoes of that moment in the forest clearing come back to Shiro— those words that broke through the haze of blood magic and reached into Shiro’s soul. The sentiment behind them that he’d steadfastly refused to put too much stock into, afraid to believe.

“I understand if you don’t regard me the same way,” Keith adds a moment after. His words are soft, timbre wavering and tender. “I’m happiest by your side, no matter what. I just… I’ve realized a lot about myself this last year, and I don’t want to keep anything secret from you. I needed you to know.”

“Keith,” Shiro sighs out, marveling at the man next to him. He reaches out to palm Keith’s cheek, thumb running gently over the scar that lies there. He thinks of Krolia’s words. “How could I not love you?”

How could anyone know him and not fall in love? It’s a mystery Shiro couldn’t unravel if he had lifetimes to consider it.

“You’re the star that guides me home, Keith. Always. You’ve held my heart for a long, long time, though I’ve tried to live on and pretend otherwise.”

Keith draws in a deep breath, eyes slowly opening wide. His gaze darts from Shiro to the hand resting on his cheek and then back to Shiro, like he can’t believe this is happening. “I-I thought you were hung up on Prince Adam—”

“ _Adam?_ No, no, no. It would’ve been a smart match, politically-speaking. All of the royal advisors were pushing hard for a betrothal, but things between us… got tense. I’ll admit he _is_ pretty handsome, though.”

“No,” Keith disagrees at once, nose wrinkling. “He’s just okay.”

Shiro snorts out a laugh, taken aback by Keith’s audible jealousy. “No one who ever courted me holds a candle to you, Keith. You’re brighter than the sun.”

“Wish you’d said something sooner,” Keith nearly grumbles, smiling despite the hint of sourness in his tone. He peeks over at Shiro. “Why didn’t you?”

He could sit here for an hour listing the reasons that have dogged him from the palace to Daibazaal.

“I feared that if I told you how I felt, you would go along with anything to make me happy,” Shiro whispers into his hair, picking the one that had worried him most. “Out of some sense of… obligation. Loyalty. Indebtedness.”

Keith snorts and knocks his knee into Shiro’s. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it, though?” Shiro questions, squinting at him. “You stomached a banana daily for _half a year_ before you admitted that you hated them—”

“Because I didn’t want to be ungrateful,” Keith stubbornly argues.

“That’s _exactly_ my point,” Shiro nearly laughs. It fades, and the prince presses into his bottom lip with his teeth. “And I worried. About you, about my family and the court, about how it would work against you if I died young. About ending up married to someone else and… and what position that would leave you in. I racked my mind, Keith, and found a hundred reasons to never hope for more.”

Keith nods. He’d no doubt found just as many incentives to bite his tongue.

“And I do wish I’d said something sooner,” Shiro tells him last, smiling ruefully. “Glad one of us is brave.”

Keith grins and ducks his head, glancing off out the window. There’s color high on his cheeks as he slowly sinks back onto the bed, his hands folded over his middle and fingers laced. He twiddles his thumbs. “So… what do we do now?”

With a grunt, Shiro lays down beside him. “I… don’t know. Honestly, I never thought I’d get this far.”

Keith hums and glances over. He looks at Shiro with a shyness that the prince hasn’t seen in years. “Me either.”

Shiro feels Keith’s fingers against his palm, light as they trace over its creases and scars and calluses. Blindly, he takes hold of his knight’s hand as it slides against his own— loose, easy to break from if Keith desires it, their palms a little clammy where they meet.

“This is nice, though,” Shiro says after a moment. He feels Keith wind their fingers together and squeeze tight.

“Yeah,” Keith agrees, soft as the distant beat of dragons’ wings. Soft like sweet dreams and wolves’ fur and everlasting affection. He smiles and closes his eyes, the picture of satisfaction. “This is nice.”

 

* * *

 

“What does _kadan-asala_ mean?”

Keith chokes a little on his _qalaba_ stew. He takes a moment to wipe his chin on his sleeve and finish chewing. “Where’d you hear that?”

“Your mother, a week back,” Shiro says, poking at his own bowl without much appetite. The meat is incredibly tough on human teeth, even after being simmered slow for hours. _Qalaba_ are known for being hardy and stupid, and in thanks for their assistance to the Galra, Kolivan has gifted a herd of three-hundred of the enormous oxen to Arus; they’ll be good feed for Ataashi, if nothing else. “She told me to ask you about it.”

Keith’s cheeks are a brilliant scarlet, and he swallows deep before speaking. “Well,” he says, pausing to fiddle with his spoon, “it’s used for someone… special.”

“Special?” Shiro tears little pieces off of his half-loaf of bread and dunks them in the dark broth for flavor. It’s rich and meaty— as many Galra dishes tend to be— and has a faintly burnt taste from the way they intentionally scorch the roux here, according to Hunk.

“It means ‘where the heart lies’,” Keith says softly, almost squirming in his seat. “It’s hard to translate perfectly, but it’s sort of a romantic variant for someone you can’t live without. It’s, um, used between lovers. Like, _really_ committed lovers. Soulmates.”

“Oh,” Shiro says as he taps the crust of his bread against the table, embarrassment turning his own cheeks warm. He isn’t sure how he’ll be able to look Krolia in the eye the next time he sees her. “Makes sense.”

“I feel like this is a conversation you two could be having in private,” Lance says from the other end of the table. Allura— apparently too well-bred to openly agree with the sentiment— dons a polite smile and continues eating as if she hasn’t heard a word of the conversation.

It’s Lotor who cracks. “Prince Shiro, Ser Keith, you are more than welcome to take this discussion to my library if the lodgings I have provided you both are in some manner unsuitable,” he suggests, very carefully. “Or perhaps a parlor somewhere. Ah, or the private gardens?”

“Literally anywhere but here, he means,” Lance translates, deadpan as he slurps his stew, for once finding some common ground with the newly coronated emperor, who winces and hides his face behind steepled hands. Allura, for her part, is trying very admirably to keep a straight face as she chews.

So they pick up their bowls and leave— Keith pointedly kicking the bench just as Lance has a spoonful of hot stew at his lips before he goes. They pace slow down one of the fine halls of Lotor’s palace as they soak their bread in _qalaba_ broth and chew it down slow.

“Does it entail a ceremony or something?” Shiro asks, curious about everything that makes up the man he loves, everything important to him.

Keith’s spent more than half a year immersed in Galra culture, absorbing their ways and delving deep to find the threads that connect him to his mother and his extended family within the Blade of Marmora. His Galra heritage reaches well beyond the little fangs and preternatural night-vision, the keen sense of smell and stamina akin to a wolf. It runs in his blood, in his passion and his yearnings, in the intensity of his feelings and his fiery devotion.

“I don’t think so,” Keith murmurs back. “It just… _is_. That’s how it sounds like it was for my parents, at least,” he adds, almost bashful.

“ _Kadan-asala_ ,” Shiro tries again, smiling at the way Keith draws in a breath and goes red along his ears. “Hm. Has a nice ring to it.”

\-  --      - -- ---- -- ----- - -- --   -  -   --           - 

They don’t make it back to Shiro’s rooms. Instead, they stumble into a small study within the wing of the palace Lotor granted to the paladins. It’s heavy with the smell of dust and old books and the woodsy incense that the Galra are fond of using.

Keith’s hands are insistent, running over Shiro like he can’t decide where to palm first, where to squeeze, where to dig his nails in. They slip under the collar of his shirt and over his belly and into his hair, tugging _just right_. The prince barely manages to turn the lock in the door before Keith is moving against him, pressing him bodily into the heavy, solid desk that sits opposite a hearth bearing smoldering coals.

Their mouths meet with a hunger completely unsated by their earlier meal. It’s far removed from their previous kisses— chaste, soft, testing— and what little fumbling they’ve done in the dark these last few nights. The crush of their lips is forceful and needy, a sudden desperation come over them both. It’s a chain of kisses that never seems to break, leaving Shiro’s chest aching in a way that only heightens his arousal.

This is Keith letting loose. As Shiro trails his tongue along his knight’s teeth, he can feel the pointed tips of lengthened canines. That’s a Galra trait, he’s since learned, triggered by heightened emotion in sparring matches and battle. He didn’t realize Keith’s fangs could be coaxed out like _this_ , with open-mouthed kisses and fervent touches.

“What do you want, Shiro?” Keith asks him, breathless as they part, both of their chests heaving.

“I don’t know,” he admits. He’s not entirely new to intimacy— adolescent exploration with a stablehand at the palace, a few trysts with Adam back when they’d been on good terms and headed for an engagement— but nothing has prepared himself for the prospect of being with someone like Keith.

Nothing’s prepared him for wanting someone so _desperately_.

“You. Just… _you_ ,” Shiro says, his hand trailing down Keith’s scarred cheek. “Any way I can have you.”

Keith cracks a smile. “It’d be far quicker to number the ways you can’t.”

The admission leaves Shiro flustered, half-babbling under his breath as Keith leans in for a nipping kiss, reckless with those pointy teeth. The knight soothes his tongue over the reddened spots under Shiro’s bottom lip, quietly apologetic, and presses soft, mouthy kisses down the prince’s jaw with the reverence of a monk laying offerings on a temple altar.

“What do you want, Keith?” he asks as he lolls his head to the side, sighing out contentment as his neck is peppered with kisses.

It gives Keith pause. His lips rest against the pulse strumming in Shiro’s throat. When he speaks, his voice is dark and roughened with need. “There’s… something I’ve thought about for a long time.”

He can probably feel Shiro’s pulse quicken. _A long time_. Keith’s been thinking of him like this for a _long time_. As long as Shiro’s pined for him? A thrill courses down along his ribs at the thought; the corner of his mouth draws up a hair, breathless and excited for what Keith has planned for them.

“Mm, do as you like, Keith. I’m all yours.” His breath hitches low in his throat as he thinks of something better. “ _Make_ me yours.”

That cuts something free inside of Keith. His dark eyes burn like fire on the water, glinting above fathomless depths. His hands settle firm around Shiro’s waist, tugging and twisting at the fabric until his shirttails come untucked and he can slide his palms over the bare skin underneath.

“Mine,” Keith purrs against his skin as he lips along Shiro’s jaw and nuzzles fondly against his ear. “My prince, my king, my _kadan-asala_.” He leaves a kiss in between every claim he voices.

There’s a series of pops in quick succession, and it’s only as Keith mumbles a hasty apology that Shiro realizes he ripped the shirt clean open. His quiet laughter cuts to a whimper as soft lips and a searing tongue plant against his chest, trailing a slick line of kisses from nipple to sternum, up to the hollow of his throat and across his clavicle, down to the muscle over his ribs. It’s slow, worshipful, Keith taking his time as he teases Shiro until his back arches and his body bows.

There’s no warning before Keith drops slow to his knees in front of Shiro, palms sliding down over his ribs, his stomach, his thighs as he goes. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, long lashes spread over the heights of his cheeks.

And Shiro is reminded of a time when Keith knelt before him ages past, knighted in the middle of a busy antechamber outside of the throne room, when a stubborn mood had stricken the prince and Keith happily obliged him. For months his requests for permission to knight Keith and appoint him as a royal retainer had been shunted aside, and it had culminated in this: Shiro drawing his sword to the affronted gasps of courtiers and the hushed murmurs of newborn gossip, all cares cast aside as he gave Keith his well-deserved due. Shafts of sunlight had fallen on Keith like the gods themselves were bearing witness, soft and many-hued as they filtered through high windows lined with dyed paper. Decked in well-tailored finery in the colors of the Shirogane clan, he’d looked a far cry from the thief who’d deftly sent Shiro sprawling in the capital streets. Keith had solemnly sworn an oath to him and let Shiro’s sword brush either side of his throat, then rose a knight by Shiro’s making—

But the only gasps in _this_ room are Shiro’s, drawn out of him as Keith tugs down the waist of his trousers and drags the flat of his tongue over the sensitive skin just below the prince’s navel.

The prince claps his hand over his mouth and eyes the locked door, wary of the hallway on just the other side. Anyone could be walking past. A servant could try to come in—

Keith yanks the lacings of his breeches open and wastes no time in getting a hand around Shiro’s hardness, cradling the weight of him in his palm. His lips are featherlight against the head of his cock, the briefest touch enough to send sparks through the pit of Shiro’s gut. A kiss, and then another, dragging his lips down the length of Shiro before sucking softly at a spot along the prince’s inner thigh.

Keith trails his way back with agonizing slowness, even as Shiro buries his hand in his thick hair and pleads for more.

“Patience yields focus, Your Highness,” Keith tells him as he drags the tip of Shiro’s cock over his bottom lip, warm breath making the man above him shudder. He smirks, teasing like a minx.

“I’m going to remember this when it’s your turn,” Shiro whispers down at Keith, the words sticking in the panting dryness of his throat.

“Hm, I hope so.” Keith is still laughing softly as he finally slips Shiro into his mouth, inching slow down his length.

The abruptness of it has a response dying in Shiro’s throat, replaced by a keen that he keeps contained behind clenched teeth and tightly sealed lips. It’s still audible, though, and the prince can feel Keith’s smile and little huff of amusement. The heated sensation has Shiro’s hand clasped around the edge of the desk, nails raking uselessly over the sleek wood.

Keith’s mouth is a furnace, hot and wonderfully welcome. The study’s chillier air makes Shiro hiss each time Keith draws back, leaving the saliva-slicked length of him exposed.

“Oh, t-teeth,” Shiro murmurs as he feels the edge of one of Keith’s canines just graze him.

Keith doesn’t stop, but he does pat his prince’s thigh reassuringly. He’s even more careful after that, so attentive and courteous even as he’s swallowing Shiro down and giving him the headiest pleasure of his life. Maybe even overeager, given that twice he presses too close and chokes himself, shaking off Shiro’s concerned caresses as he immediately finds his rhythm again.

It can only be another minute or so that passes, but under Keith’s ministrations it feels like a blessed eternity. There’s a soft noise as Keith withdraws and instead wraps Shiro in his hand, his sword-calluses noticeable as they glide over his slick skin.

“It’s, uh… more than I imagined,” Keith says, easing back on his heels and looking up with a tilted little smile. His lips are dark and full and paired with the flush high on his cheeks, it makes a pretty sight. “Sorry. Bad at this.”

“You’re doing fine,” Shiro barely manages to rattle out, the last word clipped as Keith’s strokes turn quick and demanding. “ _Fuck_ , more than fine, Keith! Gods, you might have to carry me out of here after this.”

“Happily,” Keith says, cheeky as he turns his head and drags his tongue along the underside of Shiro’s length.

“Please, Keith,” Shiro begs after another indeterminable stretch of time with Keith’s lips around him, a knuckle held between his teeth to try and stem the worst of his moaning. His eyes flutter shut as the man answers by sinking deeper onto his cock, slow and deliberate, before returning to his previous manner; it leaves him sweating and flushed an uneven red from the tenacity and persistence of his knight’s affections.

Shiro’s not sure if it’s mercy when Keith looks up at him and quickens his pace, the slide of his hand working in tandem with the bob of his head. The knight’s free hand skims up over his thigh and hips to spread over the tense ripple of Shiro’s abdomen, fingers digging gently into his newly regained muscle.

Shiro covers Keith’s hand with his own, pressing the man’s palm harder into his flesh as he doubles over. Every panted breath feels as though it might be his last as Keith draws him to the brink of orgasm, holds him at the precipitous edge, and then drags him over.

The edges of his vision blacken as he comes, the taste of a little death as his lung seize and his heart throws itself against his ribs with abandon. His seed spills into the warmth of Keith’s mouth and drips messily down his chin, and the man himself couldn’t possibly look more smug as he rises up and wipes his face clean with the handkerchief drawn from Shiro’s pocket.

He lazily collapses forward with his arms looped around Shiro’s neck, draping himself against the prince’s front. Keith sighs happily as Shiro bows his head down until their foreheads touch. “Thank you.”

If Shiro had the strength, he’d laugh. “What are you thanking _me_ for?”

Keith hums low in his throat, closed eyes suddenly blinking open and fixing on Shiro with mischievous intent. “For giving me the best sore jaw of my life.”

Shiro manages a laugh as his second wind comes. “I suppose it _is_ better than getting one in the sparring ring. You don’t have to give yourself aches and pains on my account, though,” he adds.

“It’ll get easier with practice, like everything else. You don’t need to worry about me, Shiro. My love for you is no fragile thing, and _I’m_ not fragile, either,” Keith huffs as he lips at Shiro’s jaw and grinds his hips against his front.

Gods, he certainly isn’t. Keith’s always been strong for his size, but a year of high stakes battles and training with the Marmora has made him a force to be reckoned with. While he kisses Shiro slow and sweet, Keith repositions him with a series of gentle, deliberate nudges until his prince is situated just as he wants him.

Shiro can feel the power in Keith as he straddles one of his thighs and rolls his hips, all lean and coiled muscle writhing up against him; he works his hand under Keith’s shirt and finds the dip along the smaller man’s back, damp with sweat, and presses him closer. Against his thigh, he can feel the hardness and heat of Keith pressing insistently though the material of his fitted drakeskin pants.

Shiro manages to slide his hand into the tight space between them, down Keith’s front, digits slipping into the snug waistband. It’s too tight a fit for his whole hand to squeeze in, and in a fit of impatience he tugs at the laces of Keith’s pants and yanks them loose. He drags the backs of his knuckles over the strained fabric, teasing, and as Keith mumbles a quiet _please_ against his throat, Shiro chuckles and works his hand into his pants.

His knight gasps, breath hot against his ear, but doesn’t slow. His hips ride a little higher, Keith taking hold of Shiro’s broad shoulders to leverage himself up and into the first hint of a touch. It’s shameless, how he moves. Endearingly eager, too.

Keith is hot in his hand, already achingly hard from the act he’d committed on his knees and the friction of his lazy ride on Shiro’s leg. The prince circles his thumb around the head and finds it’s already sticky-slick from the excitement; even that little has Keith burying his face into his neck, fanged mouth loosely set against the tender juncture of his throat, moaning against kiss-marked skin. Meaning to tease out more desperate noises, he drags his thumb down along the underside of Keith’s engorged cock, feeling a span of pronounced ridges, and—

 _Oh…_ That must be another Galra thing.

Even with his hand crushed between the press of their bodies, Shiro still manages to work Keith in sporadic strokes. He imagines his palm is rough on Keith’s warm, soft skin, uneven from calluses and healed over scars. It doesn’t seem of any bother to Keith, at least.

And gods— he’s _vocal_ , and Shiro didn’t anticipate that. A half-formed thought occurs in a more placid part of the prince’s mind: that it makes sense, given how loud Keith always was during their sparring matches, grunting with every block and snarling little roars for his stronger swings. Shiro can barely hear himself think over the sound of his own rushing blood and Keith’s labored panting in his ear, interspersed with labored grunts as he hikes his leg higher and ruts against his prince with abandon.

Keith moans low and long, eyes heavy-lidded under a mess of sweat-dampened hair, but even so, Shiro thinks he can see a hint of yellow behind his irises. He drives his hips into Shiro with enough force to rattle the ink and pens on the desk behind them, the hard edges of the wood digging sharp into the backs of the prince’s thighs. The only thing that quiets him is a muffled kiss, biting and needy, as he throws himself into Shiro in desperation.

A sudden jet of warmth spills across his finger and up his wrist as Keith cries out, head hung low and his teeth buried in Shiro’s shoulder. He gives a full-body shudder as the rock of his hips slows to something languid but insistent, not quite ready to stop despite the overwhelming of his senses.

Shiro immediately hooks his arm around Keith’s middle and hoists him close, supporting his full weight on one bent leg. They’re both a mess of sweat and panted breath, but Keith’s definitely the one looking worse for the wear. Or so Shiro assumes— there’s no mirror to make an accurate comparison, and on second thought, he’s fairly certain Keith’s littered a dozen possessive marks down his throat and across his collar.

 _Ah_. And his shirt, ripped open and missing more than half its buttons. And with a dark stain dribbled across the front of his charcoal breeches. He licks his lips and feels the faint soreness of Keith’s earlier bite, too. _Gods, we’re hopeless._

He has no idea how they were going to make it back to his room without being witnessed in their current disheveled state— the palace is full of eyes, not the least of them being the highly observant Marmora. But as Keith slumps heavier against him, warmly murmuring his satisfaction, Shiro finds he doesn’t much care who sees them.

 

* * *

 

He’s still getting used to the feel of his new arm— all sleek, smooth silverite and starmetal, bound together by Altean magic that burns white and sun-drenched gold within its joints— and it shows in his tendency to drop things without warning or vastly underestimate the strength of his grip.

It’s a vast improvement, and one that he still hasn’t been able to properly thank Pidge, Hunk, and Allura for. The new arm brings him no headaches or fatigue, no whispering curses that thirst for bloodshed. They’ve given him a hand with a drakeskin palm and fingerpads, textured for grip but soft enough to stroke Keith’s face without worry; no wicked talons to threaten the people he loves, no searing energy to forge new and terrible scars.

And as fine as the construction is— and it is a masterwork of artificing and engineering, to be sure— it’s Allura’s magic that breathed life into his new limb. It’s a wonder, a mystery. When Keith presses their hands together, palm-to-palm, Shiro can feel it all: the warmth of Keith’s flesh, the slight dampness on his skin, the quick tremble that runs through him.

It’s faint, but he can even feel the delicate strands as he sifts his new fingers through Keith’s hair, the feeling as light as gossamer spiders’ threads.

And it’s of immense use when it finally comes time for them to return to Arus, loading wagons with supplies and readying a caravan of rebel soldiers, refugees, and three-hundred dumb as shit oxen.

Lance confides that he feels a stirring of unease about Lotor, though he’s been nothing but a hospitable host and dependable ally, armed with practical plans to right the empire’s wrongs against a dozen conquered kingdoms. Shiro tries to weigh Lance’s judgment against his admitted jealousy over the new emperor’s closeness to Allura.

“We’ll keep an eye and an ear out,” he eventually says, though Lance looks far from pleased with the verdict. But they can’t question their alliance based on a feeling, a hunch. Not when they’re relying on Lotor to track down Sendak and Haggar, who’ve retreated east, and about to pursue another war back in Arus. “Allura is coming with us, at least.”

That much makes Lance smile. He’s excited to show her his home and introduce the princess to his family; she seems just as keen on the opportunity. And inwardly, Shiro is just as grateful to be keeping company with Allura. There’s no doubt that Lotor adores her, but…

He sighs.

Pidge and Hunk look to be loading half of Lotor’s artificing lab into the back of a covered wagon. Shiro keeps walking and pretends he didn’t see any of it.

In the stables, he finds Shabrang and starts saddling him, happier to do it himself given the horse’s… nippy tendencies. Kosmo dozes in the straw of Shabrang’s stall, curled in a tight ball, and the sight makes Shiro smile to himself. He’s pleased— and utterly, astoundingly shocked— that the two became such fast friends.

Perhaps his horse’s years are catching up to him, mellowing him at long last. Or maybe he just grew lonely in the weeks of Shiro’s long rest and recovery, and found Keith’s wolf was good company. It’s been a long journey for Shiro and Shabrang both, and he suspects the horse will be pleased to find himself back in Arus’ verdant fields, where apples and watermelon are bountiful and the streams run cool and clear. The ride to the Devil’s Divide is only about a day by the main road; by sundown, they’ll be back in their homeland for the first time in over a year.

He doesn’t hear Keith coming. It’s only by Shabrang’s excited snuffling and the quick flick of his ears that Shiro knows he’s near, padding along like a mountain cat. He slips the bridle over the horse’s head, smiling as hands suddenly come to rest on his waist and solid heat presses gently against his back.

Shiro leans back into it, turning his head the barest bit as he feels Keith rise onto his toes and touch his lips to his nape, breathing in deep through his nose. “Good morning.”

“You should’ve woken me,” Keith complains, hands roving up Shiro’s sides. His touch drifts to Shiro’s new arm, nails tracing down along a seam in the gleaming silverite that’s reinforced with starmetal, comparable to the kind that Alfor used to forge the paladin armor.

“You looked peaceful,” Shiro says as he guides the bit into Shabrang’s mouth. Peaceful and thoroughly exhausted from the previous night; Shiro wasn’t looking forward to spending a day in the saddle in his current sore state, but the discomfort was worth last night’s enjoyment. “Are you, uh, planning on saddling up Ataashi?”

Keith slips away and grabs an apple from the basket meant for the horses, chomping into it with a crunch that resounds down the nearly empty stable. “I wasn’t planning on it, no. Should I?”

“Oh. No...” Shiro answers at once, turning away to hide his disappointment. He runs his hand over Shabrang’s dark and lustrous coat before checking the girth strap of the saddle, sighing out long and low.

He can feel Keith’s staring. Can see him from the corner of his eye: arms crossed except for when he lifts the apple to bite out another chunk, brows furrowed as he studies Shiro intently.

“Is it a problem if I ride with you?” Keith asks abruptly. “I’d figured Shabrang wouldn’t mind the two of us for just a day.”

“You’re coming with?” He blurts it out, too eager in his surprise and desperate for confirmation of what he’d hoped.

“Am I— _of course_ I’m coming, you— ugh, _Shiro_ ,” he groans as he tosses the rest of the apple Shabrang’s way, paying absolutely no mind as the mammoth horse snaps it out of the air and swallows it down in one bite. “Is this why you’ve been so quiet lately?”

Shiro isn’t sure what to say. All capability for speech vanishes as Keith removes any space between them and stands just shy of glaring at him.

“Why would you think I’d stay here? My place is at your side, same as ever. And yours at mine,” he adds, poking at Shiro’s ribs through his dark riding leathers.

“I didn’t want to assume,” Shiro answers, the words weak. “I thought you might feel called to stay here, with the Marmora.”

He’d feared it, more like, and had carefully skirted any words that might bring the topic to light. The mere thought of being separated from Keith gives him grief, but the last thing he’d ever wish is to pry Keith from everything he’d fought so long to find: his mother, his past, his people. A purpose entirely his own.

“The Marmora sends Blades outside of the empire all the time,” Keith says, shrugging one shoulder and flashing him an uneven smile. “It’s how I got here, after all…”

“Thank the gods,” Shiro mutters. And thank Kolivan assigning Krolia the task of keeping watch in Arus all those years ago.

“I’m as much human and Arusian as I am Galra,” Keith adds. He takes up each of Shiro’s hands and presses a kiss to each set of knuckles. “And my oath to you comes first. _You_ come first.”

Shiro pulls his hands free only to bury them in Keith’s dark mane, fingers tangled as he runs a thumb under Keith’s jaw and tilts his chin higher. “I love you. And I’m… you have no idea how relieved I am, Keith. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

The admission turns Keith’s grin borderline smug, so quick to eat up praise when it comes from the right person.

Shiro feeds it, enjoying the way Keith blushes and preens in his hold. “Need you around to keep knives from finding my back. Keith _Kogane_ , my protector, always saving me.”

Keith hums as he gently draws Shiro’s head down until their foreheads touch, his deep, dark, nighttime eyes slipping shut. “We save each other,” he mumbles, breath puffing warm over Shiro’s lips.

It’s true. Their lives have been twined around each other’s ever since that day, a back and forth of kindnesses and sacrifices that have culminated here, to this. Neither of them would be standing here if not for the other. They wouldn’t be who they are.

“Krolia is coming, too,” Keith says as they part, rubbing his sweaty palms down the dark fabric of his snug riding outfit. “Have fun figuring out how you’ll introduce _two_ Galra in your upper command to a bunch of uptight Arusian nobles.”

Another hour and the caravan is underway, led by an honor guard provided by Lotor with an escort from the Blades of Marmora. There’s a measure of danger in crossing Daibazaal, as always, but the mood among the paladins is light— it’s a homecoming, after all, and they’ve earned it. Pidge is eager to see her family again and show off her work on Shiro’s arm, while Hunk is looking forward to having the time to sit down and make a written record of their exploits while the memories are fresh. Lance has Allura and Coran mesmerized with tales of the Varaderian Coast and its many festivals, absolutely thrilled at his family’s playing host to the paladins. 

Meanwhile, Keith tortures Shiro by whispering about all of the foods they’ll get to eat once they’re back in Arus, reminding Shiro of things he hasn’t tasted in years. Even the thought of plain porridge made from the sweet rice that grows in the Vale of Narahir makes his mouth water.

“We’ll find an inn that serves fondue,” Keith murmurs, making him tip his head back and groan. His chin digs into Shiro’s shoulder, but he’s so comfortably folded around his prince that it seems a shame to mention it. “And hot chocolate. Golden cake dripping with honey. I can make zucchini pancakes just how you like them, if we find a farm. And once we’re on the coast, I’ll swim out and get you fresh sea urchins myself—”

“Keith, no!” Shiro laughs, the very idea of it ludicrous. Keith had refused to even set foot in the ocean when Shiro once took him to Narahir, instead worriedly pacing along the shore as Shiro swam and dove to find him choice seashells. “Why? _How?_ ”

“And squid, and all the eel your belly can hold,” Keith continues, undeterred. There’s a note of determination in his voice that has Shiro worried he’s going to wake up one morning to a soaked Keith holding an armful of sea creatures.

It’s a concern for later on, though. Trying to dissuade Keith right now won’t accomplish anything lasting, but just may set his determination in steel. Instead, Shiro spends a while teasing him in the same vein— Keith is weak for savory pies and the herby flavors of the Ariz Wastes, and audibly whines at the mention of fried sweet potatoes and other greasy street food of the capital. One word about his favorite dessert from the palace has him moaning against Shiro’s back, and the prince finally laughs and eases up. He has half a mind to buy out the first sweets shop they come across and let Keith lay waste to a mountain of sugar.

They eventually drift to talk of what comes next, and it’s clear from the way Keith wraps tighter around Shiro’s middle that he’s nervous of how Krolia and his own blood ties will be received by their allies. The Galra have been a feature in cautionary tales for hundreds and hundreds of years, living on in Arusian imagination as hulking monsters bred of wolves and dragons, ready to snatch children from their beds and eat them up.

“What will you tell them?” Keith asks, his hands fisting tight in the fabric and comfortable leather over Shiro’s front. “What if they… what if my being at your side makes them turn from you?”

“Then I don’t want them,” Shiro says simply, shrugging. It’s more complicated than that, of course, as politicking and courting lords and ladies and other nobility always is, but that’s the essence of it. He’ll not be groveling to keep anyone who would see Keith and sneer.

“But you need them. Their support.” Keith’s worry has an edge of fear to it. Afraid that he’ll be the division that will lose Shiro his army and his bid for the throne. Afraid of what will happen to them.

Shiro’s hands clench tight around the corded leather of the reins. It’s not as though he wants to see Arusians loyal to him spit and turn, insulting Keith and withdrawing their soldiers from his host, but it’s a cost he’s willing to bear. They have a promise of twenty-thousand Galra warriors from Lotor, if needed— a heavy foreign presence on Arusian soil isn’t ideal, but Shiro will make do if he must.

“I need _you_ ,” he says, turning to give Keith a pointed look. “No cost comes too steep if it’s for your welfare. And if anyone claiming loyalty to me has grievances regarding you as my royal consort, they can get fucked. Honestly.”

“Shiro!”

“What? There’s already a war on. Perfect opportunity to clean house,” he grouses, some latent sourness rearing its head. “I can always raise new nobility, and there will be a few notable houses without heads soon enough— I’ll find some deserving knights who wouldn’t mind land and a lordship.”

But that isn’t the part that caught Keith’s attention, apparently. He stammers something out that sounds like gibberish, and then tries again. “R-royal consort? As in _married?_ To me? Officially?”

The question blindsides Shiro for a moment, and he inadvertently sets Shabrang on a crooked course that nearly has them bumping into one of the bull-headed _qalaba_ docilely ambling along with the caravan. Absently, Shiro notes the blue collar around its neck and realizes it must be Lance’s pet, Kaltenecker. Better to keep Ataashi away from that one.

“Was it not obvious? What did you think you would be to me? A secret?” he asks, heart filling with guilt for not banishing such thoughts from Keith’s mind sooner. “I would never put you through that, Keith. I want you beside me as my equal in all things.”

“Didn’t want to assume,” Keith says, echoing their morning in the stables, his gaze cast shyly aside. “I mean, royalty doesn’t marry like this,” he continues, gesturing down to himself in the saddle. “It’s about families and alliances and heirs. And I’m—” 

“The only person I’ll ever see myself with,” Shiro finishes for him, his jaw set.

“Half-Galra,” Keith adds, his eyebrows arching uncertainly. “People won’t trust me. Or you, by extension. They’ll say I’m whispering in your ear—”

“Oh, you’d better be,” Shiro grins. “At any rate, we now have alliances with two separate Galra factions and a written peace with the reformed empire. Our people are going to be… mingling. Good relations ought to be encouraged. And it’s my duty to lead by example, after all.”

“I’m glad to see you so confident again,” Keith huffs. By the feel of him, he’s a little more at ease. One of his hands drops to lay atop Shiro’s thigh, a thumb brushing back and forth over the finely woven fabric and soft leather. “But… I’m not sure your family is going to be pleased with you.”

Shiro snorts. “When have they ever been?”

Aside from his grandfather, that is. And a few warm aunts and uncles and older cousins who treated him less like the Iron Queen’s sole heir and more like the mischievous imp he often was. Even the moments of approval he’d won from his lady mother had been few and far between, most often coming on the backs of bloody victories that had secured or expanded Arus’ borders but left his conscious burdened.

“A number of them are displeased that I’m still breathing,” the prince adds, thinking of how many Shiroganes are currently aligned with his opponents. “I intend to keep them continually disappointed.”

After all he’s been through— after so many near scrapes and long nights in which he had reason to believe he wouldn’t survive til dawn- Shiro is more enamored of living than ever before. He’s overcome much, on his own and with Keith by his side, and he is loathe to waste his remaining time on trying to appease people who value him only for rank or blood or what he can do for them.

Keith’s true devotion deserves whole-hearted return in kind, and Shiro wants nothing more than to give it. He wants a life of love and quiet and peace with the man he loves most in all the world, his _kadan-asala_ , his dearest friend and most beloved knight.

“I’m proud of you, Shiro.”

Shiro arches a brow as he turns to look back. “Of me? Why?”

“I’d be listing reasons from here to Arus,” Keith laughs. The morning light is wan, but comes through Daibazaal’s hazy skies with more strength than it did even a month ago. It highlights Keith’s features in the prettiest of ways, glinting in his deeply blue-violet eyes and catching on his beaming smile. “You’re going to be a wonderful king, Shiro.”

“Only with all of you around to keep me in line,” he replies. And it’s true. He wouldn’t be where he is now— _who_ he is now— without them, too.

At the wide and jagged expanse of the Devil’s Divide, Allura rests and prepares to summon a portal that will spirit their caravan to the other side, where the Ariz Wastes await. Keith dismounts first, bouncing in place as he stretches his long legs, and immediately glues himself to Shiro’s side the moment he’s clear of Shabrang.

He clings close even as they stumble off toward a patch of scrubby brush to piss, and Shiro feels young and stupid in a way he hasn’t for ages as they shoulder each other playfully and then spend a few minutes picking up interesting rocks.

“I was wondering if you’d fly over with me,” Keith says casually as they compare their findings on the lazy walk back to the halted caravan, “on Ataashi.”

Shiro slips the glassy black shard Keith had given him into a pouch at his waist and glances up to the skies. Ataashi glides above them in lazy circles, riding the thermals that rise from the hard-baked soil that borders the Divide. She’s only grown bigger these last few months, her wingspan longer than some ships he’s sailed on and her appetite sized to match.

“I’d love to,” he says, giving Keith a little grin. The last time he flew over the Devil’s Divide, he was clinging to the back of Ulaz’s loyal and mortally wounded dragon, sick with fear; memories of it come back unbidden, but he’s nothing if not determined to keep the past from holding him back. There are few things as fantastic as the prospect of soaring with Keith. “Just don’t let me fall.”

Keith rolls his eyes at the teasing remark, but the way he grips Shiro’s hands— flesh and construct both, his grip as fierce as he is in all things— is a sincere promise. “Never, Shiro.”

Shiro entrusts Shabrang to Krolia for the ride through the portal. The willful horse trusts her well enough to be tied to her mount and pace beside her without snapping; Kosmo’s nearness helps, too, keeping Shabrang at ease even as his two favorite people take their leave.

Keith summons Ataashi with a ringing whistle, as casual with her as one might be a sheepdog. After readying her for flight, he helps Shiro climb astride the dragon’s back and secures him in a heavier and more comfortable saddle than the sort the Marmora typically use. There are buckles that fasten over his thighs and handle grips along leather edge, and once Keith is certain of his prince’s safety, he carefully situates himself in front of Shiro and takes up Ataashi’s reins.

He doesn’t give Shiro any warning before taking the dragon up into the skies, and as Shiro frantically slings his arms around Keith’s middle and grips him tight, the prince can feel his laughter.

“You did that on purpose,” he accuses in Keith’s ear, though it’s probably lost in the thunderous flap of beating wings and the rush of air across Ataashi’s scaled skin.

She’s only just airborne as they reach the edge of the chasm and the earth drops away, vanishing to depths that swallow up the light and return nothing but an ominous air of ancient destruction. Shiro’s stomach plummets even as he holds tighter to Keith, his nose pressed into the thick hair that whips around his face.

One of Keith’s hands reaches back and squeezes blindly along his thigh, comforting. The air around them is like the tide or a rushing stream, carrying them away and drowning out everything else. For now, it’s only the two of them— adrift in the skies together, soaring toward home, dwarfed by the sheer expanse of the land below and the unfathomable spread of the cloud-streaked heavens.

Ataashi’s wings shimmer with every beat, the sunlight here strong enough to drench her mottled red and black scales in a many-hued sheen that’s almost blinding. She shakes the long length of her neck as Keith guides her with a touch or a light draw of the reins, the cony spikes that run like a dorsal fin parting the air like a rudder.

Keith takes her on a meandering journey, banking wide and diving swift, giving Shiro a small taste of the tricky maneuvers he and the Marmora regularly pull. Ataashi climbs high at his behest, until they’re flying headlong through clouds tinted gold by the low-resting sun. It’s something out of a dream, and Shiro half-wonders if this is what Oriande looks like.

Keith encourages him to raise his arms and let his fingers streak through the damp and foggy fluff, and so Shiro does, trusting Keith and Ataashi enough to trade his viselike grip on his beloved’s waist with for something unbound and free. Like the hawks he raised as a child, let loose to roam the skies as he watched from well-guarded tower windows. If it were night, he might be able to reach up and scatter the stars with a touch, resetting the constellations to tell a new story.

Their story, maybe. The story of a lost and fallen prince, a bold thief turned noble knight, and how often and impossibly they saved each other— across years and foreign lands and the rift of cruel magic. Of how they and a band of friends and allies toppled an ancient enemy and ended a blight upon the world. Of love that blossomed and burned with the constancy of the stars in the sky, bright as full moons on clear nights, as enduring as the wind.

He certainly wouldn’t be the first Shirogane to write himself into the heavens, and if there’s anyone who deserves to be immortalized in the nighttime skies, it’s Keith.

By the time Keith finally wheels them back toward the Ariz Wastes, the sun is dipped low and it paints the desert earth bright in reds and oranges. They can see for miles, and Shiro even thinks he recognizes landmarks from his years of poring over maps and traversing the countryside: the petrified forest, the salt flats, the towering pillars of Thousand Needles. It’s beautiful, and every inch of it reminds him of Keith.

Further in the distance they spy the rest of the caravan, campfires already burning as they settle in for their first night back in Arusian territory. Ataashi roars in recognition and delight, and even from here Shiro can see the sound send people scrambling. They calm as the dragon banks breezily overhead, familiar and reassuringly uninterested in eating her beloved rider’s companions.

Keith draws out their ride, carrying Shiro far and wide, above pristine, greenery-studded mesas and low over salt flats that sparkle from the last remaining vestiges of daylight. The heavy beats of dragon’s wings ring in Shiro’s ears as they pull turns that make the horizon swim before his eyes, and he thinks that he could spend forever flying with Keith and still never tire of it— of the sky opened up for just the two of them, the solitude and warmth they share together, the thrill of sharing these sights with him alone.

As they circle back, Keith crooks an arm behind himself and Shiro can feel his knight’s gloved fingers wriggle, searching for a hand to hold. Shiro gives him both, folding Keith’s hand between his palms and weaving his mismatched fingers together around it protectively.

_It’s good to be home._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading!! this is now the biggest fic I've ever done, and i hope it was as fun and worthwhile for you as it was for me lol.  
> You can find me on Tumblr [@neyasochi](https://neyasochi.tumblr.com) and twitter [@neyasochi](https://twitter.com/neyasochi)! I also have a tag for this series on my Tumblr. you can search for 'as a star forever out of reach' and find lots of good questions and comments!
> 
> there is also a prequel to this fic-- look for the first part of the Bond and Blade series below to see how Shiro and Keith first met :)


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